Deep Water
by Alpha Flyer
Summary: Q is being a pest. Tom dives into another ocean, and Will Riker gets wet.
1. Chapter 1

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

When your muse takes a turn for the bizarre, it's best to just roll with it. The little thing probably needed a break from all the angst I've been inflicting on it lately.

Muse and I owe our inspiration first and foremost to my precocious child, for the "boat" conceit; to Runawaymetaphor, for the beginning quote (another one of our writing challenges …!); and to a discussion on Trek BBS, on the theme _When Star Trek Goes Bad_. Saurian brandy, I dare say, has nothing on _this_ cocktail.

I doubt Paramount would want a piece of this one (although who knows? They lay claim "Spock's Brain" after all), but they can't in good conscience disavow the characters or the ship. I do take full responsibility for the story, though, which is part of my post-Endgame cycle and takes place while Tom Paris serves on the Enterprise under Captain Will Riker. (This development makes sense if you have read at least the very last bit of "Choices", but it isn't necessary to do so. Chronologically is occurs a few weeks after "The Neutral Zone".)

* * *

**DEEP WATER**

**By Alpha Flyer**

* * *

_I to the world am like a drop of water_

_That in the ocean seeks another drop._

Shakespeare, _Comedy of Errors_

…_.._

I

"Tom, this is the worst idea you've ever had," Will Riker growls, but it doesn't come across very well through the bubbles. Talking underwater is hard at the best of times, and Will is still not used to the gills.

"What do you mean was a bad idea – coming down here, or pissing off Q?"

As qualification attempts go it may seem to be hair-splittingly pedantic, but Tom really needs to know. Because if Riker is just annoyed at him for smart-mouthing Q, that would be one thing; that's water under the bridge. Tom is prepared to say he's sorry – he is, actually - and then they could just get on with what they're doing.

But if the Captain has a substantive concern with swimming through the ruins of what must be a drowned civilization, past drifting clouds of jellyfish and the odd sharp-finned, toothy creature, well, that's a different story. Because then they'd have to talk about other options, and Tom really doesn't see any right now.

Not to mention that talking would take a while, because Will is really Not Good at this whole underwater thing. Tom assumes it's because there isn't much opportunity for diving in Alaska; the water there tends to be the kind you walk on most of the time, and the Captain is much better at indoor sports or stuff involving snow. As it turns out, though, Riker doesn't answer and Tom decides to file his little outburst under _Generic Complaints Not Requiring Further Attention_.

They really don't have time for a tactical conference anyway. The Enterprise wasn't designed to float, and even with the miracles B'Elanna, Harry and Jorak have doubtless been working on the external stabilizers and the shield calibrations, they both know she is doomed to capsize.

The solution to their ship's problem, if there is one, is here somewhere, in the deep. Hopefully, in the temple he can now see emerging from the semi-darkness. Snapping jaws be damned.

_Just keep swimming,_ Tom tells himself.

He motions Will along, noting with some relief that the Captain is following his lead, in a manner best described as 'game', or 'plucky'. Tom's brain is thinking on about six tracks already and he suppresses the impulse to try and remember the French words Jules Verne might have used.

Riker has stopped grumbling, too, and the trail of bubbles behind him has thinned out. Tom gives a kick with his flippers and shoots ahead, hoping his somewhat more buoyant Captain can keep up as he heads into the sunken temple.

…..

_Earlier that morning, Alpha Shift_

As he crosses the bridge of the USS Enterprise, Commander Tom Paris can't help but feeling a little bit – just a _teensy weensy _little bit – self-satisfied.

It's been - four, five? – _five_ months now that he's been assigned to the Fleet's flagship as her new XO, and he's beginning to think that maybe he's not just faking it anymore. Or at the very least, that maybe they won't find him out this time around.

He's almost completed his first round of personnel evaluations; the crew nod respectfully and say 'sir' when he walks down the corridor, prison record be damned; his gut has fully recovered from the transporter gizmo he'd stuck in it a few weeks ago; and the ship's counselor approves of him because he's been dragging the Captain to an exercise room three times a week. To top it off, Miral is almost over her 'princess' phase and B'Elanna … well, let's just say, his wife's romantic streak was pretty vigorous the night before. Life on the Enterprise is pretty damn good.

Tom grins a cheerful 'Good morning' at Will Riker as he drops into the chair to the Captain's right. Another beautiful day in the Alpha Quadrant.

But all those happy feelings evaporate as quickly as the mists of San Francisco on a summer's morn when he hears a *pop*, like a cork coming out of something that should really have remained closed, followed by a voice he'd hoped never to hear again.

That whiny, bored drawl, so insufferably smug (although for what reason has always escaped Tom), the bastard child bred of arrogance and petulance.

"_Where's John Luke?"_

Apparently, being omnipotent still doesn't come with the ability to pronounce French names. Will Riker, groaning loudly, shakes his head, buries his face in his hands and briefly squeezes his eyeballs shut with his right thumb and forefinger.

"Q…" he groans again, although it sounds more like a curse. Which it is, actually, all things considered.

"What the _hell_ do you want?"

But Q, sporting his usual Captain's pips and command red under the grey, ignores the less than enthusiastic welcome from the man he once tried to recruit into the Continuum. If his oblivious smile is anything to go by, Riker might as well be throwing him a parade. Then his big, pale eyes fix on Tom Paris.

"But what is _he_ doing here? Isn't that Kathy's Helmboy? Aren't you on the wrong ship? Not to mention the wrong side of the galaxy?"

Maybe omniscience also doesn't include regular briefings on Starfleet personnel movements? Q seems genuinely confused for a moment, but Tom suspects he is only putting it on. Sure enough, the being's eyes sparkle up and an impish grin dimples his face. He rubs his hands in glee in a gesture Tom suspects he must have picked up from a cheap 20th century Earth movie.

"Well, never mind, it _is_ a happy coincidence to find both of you here."

_Yeah, right, _Tom thinks, _coincidence my ass, _but he manages to keep his mouth shut.

Q rubs his hands gleefully, ignoring Mike Ayala who is trying to attract his attention by pointing a phaser at him. Tom tries to wave Mike off – the big former Maquis has never gotten over his skepticism for Q's reported powers, never having seen them live – but it's too late. The fingers snap and the shiny Starfleet issue weapon turns into something bright orange with a blue trigger, obviously made cheaply in one of Earth's former commercial empires.

Mike reflexively pulls that blue trigger. A thin beam of water shoots out, barely a foot long (it still somehow manages to hit Riker in the left eye, halfway across the bridge) and leaves a puddle on the bridge. Tom briefly wonders how Mike will fill in the _Tactical Equipment Loss Report_; then he remembers that as the XO he'll have to sign off on it, and frowns.

Q sails above it all like it never happened. In his version of time, it probably didn't.

"You see, the Continuum was getting a little tedious, Junior is off making a new galaxy somewhere and the Missus and I haven't spoken since that unfortunate incident with the chewing gum. So I was thinking of giving you a little mystery to solve, and watch you flail around. Nothing arduous; you'll be done by teatime."

He flashes a very theatrical smile, complete with a couple of little stars that blink off his incisors.

"Let me get this right. You want our _help _with something?"

Tom doesn't know what he is more, pissed off or flabbergasted. Right now it's a tie, but Q's next comment pushes Tom's inner barometer deep into the _ticked_ zone.

"Nothing quite so dramatic as _help_, my dear Helmboy. There is nothing you puny little humans could possibly do to _help_ the Q. What I have in mind is something purely for entertainment. Mine, to be exact."

Tom has had enough with the supercilious preening. Sure, it ain't bragging if you can do whatever you say, but that doesn't mean that you should. He learned that lesson some time ago – telling people you're the best pilot they ever clapped eyes on may be true, but from Janeway all that got him was an eye roll. Her respect - that he had to earn.

"Ah. I see. We _puny humans _can't help the mighty Q? I distinctly remember pointing a gun at your boss' head while you were tied to a pole, presumably saving your life in the process. _Define_ _help_."

_Oh, ouch. Didn't he just do exactly what_ … Shit. Too late.

Q walks over to the bridge and stands before Tom, legs slightly apart and hands on his hips in a reasonable approximation of Kathryn Janeway, as he studies the XO carefully.

"Ah yes. You always were the mouthy one, weren't you, Helmboy. Kathy and Chuckles used to complain about you sometimes. And didn't that … _heroic _streak of yours get you into some deep water, on a number of occasions?"

A brief flash, and Q _is_ Kathryn Janeway, with a look on her face that Tom never hoped to see again.

"Looks like it might have done so again. I'm disappointed in you, Lieutenant. Ensign. Commander. Whatever. _Disappointed. _And I hereby reduce you to the rank of Crewman."

A gleeful grin crosses Q's … Janeway's … Q's face, and he … she's practically crowing now. Tom refuses to look down to see if he still has his pips.

"No, much better! You're _all_ going to be crew! And the ship – oooh, you're gonna love _this_ …"

Q snaps his fingers.

…..

The bridge seems suddenly a bit wobbly; Harry's immediate adjustment to the inertial dampeners has absolutely no effect. Tom, who recognizes the feeling instantly, widens his stance and swallows hard.

_No. He didn't …_

"Screen to visual," he commands O'Reilly at the helm, afraid of what they might see. The pilot taps in the necessary command, and the screen fills with … blue.

A lot of blue. Different kinds of blue. There is sky blue, interspersed with a few fluffy white clouds, and then there is the more ominous sea blue. It too is interspersed with white, but those are the caps on the waves that fill the view screen right up to the horizon, where some darker clouds are piling up.

_He did._

The USS Enterprise, Starfleet's flagship, she of the storied name in both maritime and celestial navigation, is currently bobbing up and down on some unknown ocean like a … well, like a _ship_.

Judging by the waves he can see, Tom figures that the saucer section is more or less above the surface, while the vast majority of the star drive section is underwater. It's a toss-up whether the observation windows in Ten Forward would be showing indifferent seabirds swirling in the sky, or surprised marine creatures staring in.

O'Reilly, the pilot, is at a bit of a loss as to what to do with the helm of a ship that is bobbing rather than cruising at warp speed, and then B'Elanna calls up from engineering, wondering why the hell is her warp core looking like a glorified propeller, and who or what the hell is _Evinrude_?

Q gives a self-satisfied snicker at that, scrunching up his shoulders as he mutters, "Oooh, that _was_ a nice touch, wasn't it?" to himself and anyone who will listen.

At the science console, Ensign Banerjee frets to her neighbour on environmental, in a whispered tone, about whether the ship is watertight. Harry, who is standing at Ops, trying to make sense of his readings, dutifully points out that since air doesn't leak_ out_ of the ship when it's in space, things are unlikely to leak _in_ when it's not. He refrains from mentioning the possible effect of icebergs or rocks on the hull.

Which is just as well, since Beverly Crusher picks that moment to announce over the comm that sudden outbreaks of nausea are being reported from all over the ship; Troi whispers something to Will about the crew being 'uneasy'.

By now Tom is beginning to have serious thoughts about buoyancy, and he sees the same concern in the Captain's eyes. The Delta Flyer can double as a submarine in a pinch, but a Galaxy Class ship wasn't really designed to float… .

Riker gives Q/Janeway a dirty look and sweeps past him, walks over to Harry and Jorak and asks them – quietly, so as not to alarm the rapidly greening Banerjee any further - to run a diagnostic on the Enterprise's ratio of weight and density over the water it is displacing.

"Oh, don't bother."

Much to Tom's relief, Q has tired of his Janeway imitation and turned back into his usual effete self. He gives a contemptuous wave of his hand.

"It won't sink if you get the job done in the next two hours or so. That Archimedes fellow was quite clever, for a human."

Tom and the Captain react at almost the same time.

"The ship's a _she_, not an _it_," Tom's snarls contemptuously, his nautical ire raised.

Riker has been around Q a few times more often, usually in pretty taxing and unfunny circumstances, and zeroes in on a different word.

"_Job_?"

A little belatedly - and chastened by the Captain's attention to the more relevant things - Tom seizes on another little tidbit from Q's speech.

"_Two hours?"_

"Yes, there's a storm coming," Q replies breezily.

"I thought I would liven up your stunted little lives for a bit – that mystery I mentioned. But since Helmboy here is so convinced that you're species is actually _helpful_, I've decided to make it more interesting."

The Storm_. Oh great. _Now Tom really feels like an idiot.

"Keep your big mouth shut," his Dad always said when he got in trouble in school. "Half your problems would be solved if you controlled your urge to tell the world just how smart you are, Thomas. Show, don't tell."

Will it make his Father happy to hear that he finally learned that particular lesson? Today? But what it is with oceans, that they seem to be the favoured place for him to have an intellectual growth spurt?

Jorak, who has so far been spared any previous personal encounters with members of the continuum but has certainly heard about them, raises both Vulcan eyebrows.

"I do not suppose it would sway you to know that we are on an urgent mission for Starfleet."

Riker stares at his security officer in surprise. Vulcans can lie? Travelling to Bolus IV to pick up the newly elected Federation vice-president might be an honour and a chore, but it isn't an _urgent mission_ as he would define it. Then the conditional Jorak has used strikes him, and his surprise turns into admiration: Sophistry under pressure.

Q, however, doesn't even dignify Jorak's intervention with a response. And he sounds almost – almost – nonchalant when he says, "There's a rumour in the Continuum that somebody left something important behind, someplace on this planet. I'd like you to find it, and tell me what it is."

That's a lot of "somes" in one sentence, and Riker punts a challenge over to Q to be a wee bit more specific.

"Down there," Q gestures vaguely to the floor. "I'm sure you'll know it when you see it."

Tom isn't so easily placated, or distracted. He doesn't buy the _I'm bored_ routine for one minute.

"And if it's such an interesting _rumour_, and you're so _bored_, why don't you go look for it – whatever _it_ is – yourself?"

Q silently studies his fingernails for a bit, leaving Tom to wonder very briefly what kind of cosmic dirt he might be examining there, before it hits him. And despite having decided he'd just learned a lesson on when to keep quiet, he just can't help himself. This isn't bragging, anyway, it's pertinent analysis. Or so he tells himself.

"You can't handle water, is that it? Whatever it is, it's underwater, and for some reason your … your _omnipotence_ doesn't work underwater? Oh, that's priceless."

Riker swallows a guffaw as the ridiculousness of his XO's proposition – and the possibility of its truth – strikes him. And being himself, and really not all that different from Tom Paris, he doesn't hesitate to strike another blow into the same groove, to see if he can cut deeper.

"So that's why you spend your days floating around the universe, looking at planets from up top? Why your so-called continuum is so dry it's practically got tumbleweeds rolling down the road? _Because you're afraid to get wet_?"

The swallowed guffaw turns into a cackle of mirth. Riker cackling is a sight many of his bridge officers haven't seen before, and Banerjee's stomach finally loses containment.

Q is clearly not impressed or pleased, and for the first time since either man has known him, his armour of superciliousness seems to have a little chink in it. A chink that manifests as a flash of anger in eyes of palest crystal.

He snaps his fingers again.

...

Suddenly, both Captain and First Officer find themselves _outside_, standing on top of the Enterprise's saucer section which is being lapped by the waves of that unknown ocean. But what makes it worse is the fact that they can't breathe – and the problem doesn't appear to be coming from a lack of atmosphere; there are flocks of quite ordinary-looking seabirds wheeling in the clouds above them. Something is keeping them aloft, and whatever it is, it should be breathable.

Standing there, gasping for air but feeling nothing useful filling his lungs, Riker hurls an accusing glare in Q's direction. Q just shrugs, with an indifference bordering on malevolence. Whoever may have thought of him as comic relief, or as a diversion from the tedium of a deep space mission, has obviously never seen him like this - when he essentially tosses his toys, his _sentient_ toys, into a situation they have not asked for and that could result in their relatively immediate death.

Tom, who knows more than most people about the possible impact of sudden metamorphosis on the respiratory system, has a quick look at Riker. His eyes widen and he rasps out something barely comprehensible.

It sounds to Riker, for all the world, like "Gills!"

Tom shoves his surprised Captain off the Enterprise's saucer and into the ocean, following after him in a dive that might have scored higher if he hadn't been in such a hurry. Once in the water, he grabs Riker and pushes his head under the waves – not an easy feat, given their relative size and the Captain's natural reluctance.

But with their heads underwater, instinct – all of forty-five seconds exposure's worth, but pretty powerful stuff – kicks in, and both men quickly figure out how to filter water through their newly acquired breathing apparatus in sufficient quantity to keep their brain functions alive. Tom manages to kick off his Starfleet issue boots, which are getting too tight for the webbing he can feel sprouting between his toes, and motions to Riker to do the same.

After they have recovered their equilibrium a little (Riker is still sputtering and glaring at Tom a little, like it's the XO's fault they've turned into something vaguely fishy) they both break surface to see if Q has anything else to say, useful or otherwise.

They're both careful not to try and breathe outside of the water this time.

"There, I've saved you the trouble of redesigning Helmboy's little toy shuttle," Q snarks at Riker, all of his erstwhile affability (such as it ever was) gone, "by redesigning _you_."

He waves his hand dismissively.

"Don't ever say I don't do anything for you, even after you've both been so deliberately rude. Come back when you've found what I'm looking for, and I may turn your ship back into something your new helmboy can handle."

He vanishes with a little _poof, _one that for once seems more displacement of air than deliberate special effect. Tom allows himself to sink back underwater before uttering the one word he's really been wanting to say for some time.

"Shit."


	2. Chapter 2

_R.I.P. Neil Armstrong _

_15-08-1930 to 25-08-2012_

_You gave us the moon_

* * *

II

With the command team gone and no omnipotent being to interrogate on their whereabouts, Jorak takes it upon himself to start issuing orders. For a Vulcan he is quite ambitious – advancement of the best and brightest being a matter of logic, as far as he is concerned - and has made it pretty clear that he is ready to drop the "Lieutenant" in front of the "Commander" any time now. Harry is already on the first item, though; some things you don't need to be told by a superior officer.

"I've located the Captain and Tom ... the Commander. The computer registers their comm badges, but I don't have contact. I do have their bio signs though. They're outside the ship, in the water. Bio signs seem to be stable, but they're … they're a bit odd, sir."

Jorak raises an eyebrow. _Odd_ is a rather imprecise analysis coming from a Starfleet officer, even from a non-Vulcan.

"Clarify, please, Lieutenant Kim."

"Well, they still register as themselves, but their oxygen intake seems to have altered," Harry replies with a frown. "I'm not a biologist, but it seems almost … as if they were no longer quite human. There's an overlay of something else. Elements consistent with … umm … certain kinds of … umm … "

He looks up, a tinge of panic creeping into his voice as he continues.

"… _marine creatures_."

Harry almost whispers that last bit, as if he's afraid that people will laugh him off the bridge, and for a moment his statement just sort of hangs in the air while everybody takes a deep breath.

Deanna Troi, who in fifteen years with Picard has seen almost everything - including watching her now-husband turn into a caveman, her ex-lover into a targ and herself into a rather slimy amphibian - doesn't waste time questioning Harry's sanity. If anything, her attitude suggests that this sort of thing happens every other day. She simply nods and takes charge, subtly tapping her three full Commander's pips to remind Jorak just who is the ranking officer on the bridge, and to hell with the _nice and warm counselor_ routine.

Of course, Deanna isn't exactly an expert at deciphering sensor readings of this sort, but she does know someone who is. And unlike some Captains she knows of, Deanna Troi knows how to delegate.

"Troi to Sickbay. Beverly, can you have a look at the bio readings that Harry is about to send you and tell us what they mean?"

She nods at the Lieutenant, who takes the hint and quickly enters the necessary commands to transmit his data.

Down in a Sickbay that is rapidly filling up, the Chief Medical Officer hides her annoyance at being interrupted just now, as well as her surprise that it is the ship's counselor doing so, quite well. Assuming that there must be a good reason for Troi's request she hands the freshly replicated basin she's been holding to Nurse Ogawa and walks briskly over to her console.

Ogawa, for her part, silently takes the basin over to Ensign Larsson whose pale Nordic skin has taken on a distinctly greyish hue. The nurse casts a calculating look around Sickbay. All the biobeds are occupied, and people are now sitting and moaning on the floor; two more are staggering in. The smell of vomit has started to overwhelm the environmental system. At the rate things are going, they will have to replicate several hundred anti-nausea hypo sprays before the end of the afternoon. And, judging by sounds emanating from Larsson and a couple of the new arrivals, quite a few more basins.

Beverly bends down over the console, her hair dropping like a red curtain as she does. She taps a few commands to correlate the data with other files, frowns and taps in a few more. Adjusting her instruments repeatedly, she finally shakes her head and opens a channel to the bridge.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that the Captain and Tom have acquired gills, and everything that goes with them, replacing their respiratory functions and pulmonary system. But their bio signs are otherwise consistent with what we have on record, so the change is not down to the DNA level. Their brainwaves seem fine, too, but I can't tell whether their cognitive functions have been affected. Can you bring them in? I'd like to have a closer look."

She frowns as she considers the logistics and adds, almost as an afterthought, "Of course we would need a tank or something so they can breathe."

_Gills. _Harry mouths the word to himself. What on Earth are they going to tell B'Elanna? Not to mention Miral. _Sorry, kiddo, your Daddy has been turned into a fish? The good news is, he can say hello to the Little Mermaid for you. _

The thought crosses his mind that Tom would probably find the funny in this whole situation, at least after a few minutes, and he represses the urge to snort. At least for now, Harry decides, he has to remain professional. And focused. Professional and focused. Like Deanna Troi, whose own husband has been turned into a … no, he can't allow himself to think about it. _Professional. Focused. _

Harry clears his throat, punches in a few commands, and loses his sense of humour.

"I can read both their comm badges _and _their bio signs, Doctor, but I can't get a transporter lock for some reason. Q has probably done something to disable our instruments, when he changed the engine. I'm afraid a trip to Sickbay will have to wait."

"Q?"

Beverly gives one of those deep _well-that-explains-everything-so why-the-hell-wasn't-I-in-the-loop? _sighs of hers.

"Someone _could_ have told me he had something to do with this."

Troi ignores her and her quite valid complaint for the moment and fixes her liquid black gaze on Harry.

"Can you try and bring the comm system back on line, Harry? I can sense Will, but only a little. I can't reach him enough for a response."

Troi has been trying to stretch her Betazoid senses to find her _imzadi, _but all she has gotten for her trouble was the briefest feeling of un-Will like panic, followed by relief and then a major bout of anger. Not the sort of mood where he'd be open to an empathic transmission from his wife, let alone be able to reciprocate. Empathic communication is a skill which, like Will Riker's love for his wife, had been suppressed for far too long but unlike the latter, is still a work in progress.

Harry has the grace to look a little sheepish at the exhortation to do his job, and do better. _So much for focused and professional. _

He fiddles with the comm system again, and suddenly – he doesn't really know what he's done – it springs to life, albeit producing rather strange sounds. It stands to reason, based on what they know, that there'd be some …

"Bubbles."

"Attempting to compensate for underwater sonic distortions, and eliminating extraneous noise patters." Jorak, too, has been busy.

After a minute or so of Harry and Jorak joining forces on their respective consoles, the whole bridge can hear it, quite clearly. One word.

"Shit."

Harry winces a little, then shrugs. It is what it is.

"Well, at least we know that Tom's brain is still functioning within normal parameters."

Deanna gives him a wry look and hopes for the best.

"Enterprise to Riker and Paris. Captain, Commander – do you read?"

Silence. A few more attempts, and it is clear to everyone on the bridge that what communication channels there are, traffic is strictly one way.

He quickly makes sure that Jorak's adjustment is applied to all peripheral communications equipment, including the communicators pinned to Riker and Tom. Might as well make it easier for them to talk to each other, Harry figures, even if all they seem to be producing right now is a string of escalating and surprisingly inventive expletives - including one in _Romulan_? - in which Q features prominently.

Troi nods decisively, dismissing, or more accurately, shelving, her concerns for her husband and friend. They're fine, for the moment. She forces herself to repeat, like a mantra, the main lesson from that command exam she took so long ago: _Your duty is to the ship and its crew. _

And because she's the type of officer who tends to look at the bigger picture, she remembers something that Q had mentioned, somewhat off-handedly, and that maybe others have forgotten in the midst of everything else.

_Storm coming. _

Two hours isn't a long time and there are almost twelve hundred people on the ship, including almost three dozen children, many of whom are already in distress from the unaccustomed motion of the ship.

"What happens when the storm that Q mentioned gets here? Is there anything we can do to stabilize the ship? Delay the effect of waves on the hull?"

Luckily B'Elanna has just stormed on the bridge, in time to overhear the last bit. She decides to forego venting her complaints and fields the question instead.

"We'll need to reconfigure the shields to compensate for external pressure and adjust the inertial dampeners a little. We've done something like this before, with the Delta Flyer."

She exchanges a quick look with Harry that has Troi frowning a little; she doesn't need her empathic senses to know that there are unpleasant memories for both officers associated with that particular episode. She and Tom have spent some quality time on it.

"But stabilization won't keep the waves away from the saucer section, so capsizing due to external factors is still a potential issue."

"Do we have impulse engines and thrust, Commander?" Jorak asks. "Sufficient to get the ship into orbit, or at least above the storm?"

B'Elanna shakes her head vigorously in the negative.

"All we have is forward movement, and very limited at that. Impulse thrusters are offline. With what Q did to my engines, all we could do is lower the warp core down into the ejection chute until it's halfway out. When we activate it, with what power remains in the matter-anti-matter chamber it might act as a propeller."

"A _what?_" Troi is a little out of her depth now, and not afraid to admit it.

"Ancient propulsion device from carbon fuel days," O'Reilly helpfully interjects. "The principle was used in ships and early aviation. Primitive, but functional."

B'Elanna looks at him, mildly impressed. No wonder Tom likes the guy, despite his rampant insecurities. They probably played with the same toys when they were little. Still do, actually.

"That's right. It can move the ship forward, but not very fast. I doubt I can get up enough speed to stay ahead of any storm though."

"Plus, what about Tom and the Captain?" Harry adds loyally, forgetting that B'Elanna doesn't know about their predicament yet. "We can't just leave them."

Troi immediately realizes the rather significant omission. She takes the engineer aside and fills her in on the basics, her hand on B'Elanna's arm. To the surprise of absolutely no one, B'Elanna snarls something nasty in Klingon and slaps her hip with a balled fist. But, like all of them, she's a professional and pulls herself together quickly.

Belatedly, it occurs to Troi that this would normally be the time where Will would call a senior officer's meeting, and so she does, asking people to turn up on the double.

The _tour de table_ is quick and efficient, and nobody wastes any time in unnecessary handwringing. The clock is ticking.

"I'll have my team focus on stabilization and containment." B'Elanna.

Petra Cran, the astrometrics and science officer, announces with somewhat unseemly glee that they appear to be somewhere in the Beta Quadrant, on the outer edge of one of the galaxy's arms. To Beverly's disgust, Cran makes it pretty clear that all she wants is to get back to her instruments; to her, this is a scientific opportunity not to be missed.

Troi shrugs it all off. It's not the first time Q has flung her ship to the far beyond, and location is the least of her worries.

"Someone should consider what we can throw overboard to increase buoyancy," Harry offers.

"I'll send out a team to inoculate the entire crew against seasickness," Beverly states. "Also recommend that we evac non-essential personnel and families via the escape pods and shuttles. That would safeguard lives _and_ decrease weight."

Troi likes both Dr. Crusher's suggestions and looks at B'Elanna. "I assume the force fields in the escape hatches and shuttle bays will permit underwater exit?"

The engineer simply nods. Good. That matter is decided.

"We could go and back up the Captain and Tom with whatever they're doing, on the Flyer," O'Reilly adds hopefully. He's been told by a few people – although not by Tom Paris himself, the man is curiously closed-mouthed on that subject - that the XO once used the shuttle as a submarine, and he has been dying to try it himself ever since.

Troi basically approves all the ideas that have been put forward, and tasks Harry to make the necessary changers to Flyer One and take O'Reilly and Mike Ayala out to find the command team. It shouldn't be hard, with the comm badges still active. Any sign of Q or Q-like doings anywhere, anytime, are to be reported to the bridge immediately, and environmental better keep a close eye on the weather.

The meeting over, and everybody sets to work.

…..

They've been heading straight down for a while now, but fortunately the waters don't seem to be getting murky, or dark for that matter. On the contrary, sunlight from the surface is being reflected back from the sandy bottom in speckles and waves in a sort of liquid, luminescent dance.

It would probably be all rather fun, Tom thinks as he flippers down with the easy grace that comes from years of practice, if it weren't for the pressure to find an undefined _something, somewhere - _within a very clearlydefined time span. The other thing that is a bother is the periodic shadows that glide over that speckly bottom, the shadow of something big and unpleasant swimming above them.

One of those big, unpleasant things had come awfully close to them earlier, possessed of a wide-open mouth and far too many teeth for comfort. Luckily when they had shed their boots, turtlenecks and tunics – the water is pretty warm after all – they had decided to keep their belts and all those annoying dangly bits that hang from them. Tom had learned pretty early on in the Delta Quadrant never to leave his quarters without a phaser strapped to his hip. Equally luckily, whoever designed them had assumed that they would need to be fired in all sorts of atmospheric conditions - including, as it turns out, water.

So now, whatever shadows are gliding overhead are coming to feed of whatever it was that Tom had shot earlier. He doesn't really want to think about what happens when dinner is done, or when they have to swim back up through the churning, ravenous crowd.

They're almost at the bottom now though, and the only sights that present themselves are a forest of elegant green fronds that are waving gracefully in the currents created by swarms of colourful fish. There's also an expansive bed of rather enormous clams, which remind Tom uncannily of the kind that Miral's favourite princess - a mermaid that looks a bit like a younger version of Dr. Crusher - apparently likes to nap in.

Tom slows down to let Riker catch up, since it is clear they have to figure out where they should go next. The Captain, when he gets there, taps Tom on the shoulder and points to the clams, most of which are open, no doubt looking to sift the warm waters for plankton or whatever. His mouth emits a small burst of bubbles, which Tom, assisted by Harry's adjustments to the communicator, actually understands quite clearly.

"Pearls?"

_Pearls. _

Certainly, those huge clams seem eminently capable of producing major pearls. In theory, anyway. Could that be what Q is after? A pretty bauble to appease his offspring's mercurial mother? It doesn't seem likely given the control he has over all things geo- and biological (and just a little too easy) but Riker is swimming up to the nearest of the huge clams and peeks inside.

The serrated edge of the enormous shell is fringed with what looks like long, rusty-red fronds that thicken intermittently into bright orange knots, like an old-fashioned beaded curtain that waves slightly in the current Riker has created with his approach. Sure enough, the refracted light from the surface ever so often dances over something round and opalescent, shimmering deep in the fleshy folds. Riker flashes a triumphant grin and reaches into the mollusk's folds for an impromptu body search. His arm lightly grazes the drifting fronds.

What happens next goes down really, really quickly, and Tom has occasion to be once more impressed with his Captain's reflexes, which are those of a much younger man, not to mention of a seriously mean fighter. Will manages to get his arm out of the clam just as it closes with a vicious snap that sends a cloud of sand over the bottom of the ocean. The sand cloud, in turn, triggers a chain reaction among the other clams which, mindless things that they are, seem convinced that whatever it is that is touching their radulae must be a threat. Or food.

"Obviously those fronds aren't just there to sift out plankton," Tom observes after he has ascertained that the Captain still has all his fingers. Being out of breath with adrenaline creates kind of a ticklish feeling inside his gills, and he scratches himself absently.

"We better keep our feet away from those things."

Riker nods, obviously ready to gloss over the whole embarrassing episode as if it hadn't happened. He seems to have given up looking for pearls, anyway.

"Now what?" he blubs. "I'm open to suggestions."

They are both quiet for a moment. Neither of them notices that the water around them is slowly filling with fish that had disappeared when they arrived. Overhead a school of millions of silvery bodies, each no larger than Tom's little finger, undulates in unpredictable patterns occasioned by a dozen or so larger fish that seems to be slowly herding them towards a more convenient lunch spot.

"You know what I just realized? The communicators are working," Tom finally says, reluctantly tearing his eyes off the spectacle of life and death playing out above them. "I can hear you much better all of a sudden, despite the bubbles. Harry or Jorak must have fiddled with the receptors."

He taps his badge. "Paris to Enterprise. Can you read?"

Silence.

"Apparently not," Riker says. "Odd, because the translator is obviously working. So there _is_ a link on some level."

He frowns, swiping irritatedly at the little blue-and-purple fish that tries to examine his beard now that they've stopped moving.

"And they must have heard us, to be able to adjust for the underwater distortions. I wonder if they still can."

Tom thinks for a moment.

"And if they can hear us up top …"

"… so can Q," Riker finishes his sentence.

The two men stare at each other for a few seconds while a fluorescent jellyfish drifts by, propelled by a graceful pumping action. It reminds Will momentarily of the alien creatures they encountered at Farpoint Station, his first mission with the Enterprise - the very first time he met Q, and his not-so-hilarious penchant for threatening a crew (if not all humanity) with certain death. Basic extortion, just to prove something that an entity laying claim to omniscience ought to have been bloody well able to figure out for himself.

Obviously – as Tom has suggested - Q's alleged omniscience doesn't extend to these watery depths, though, or else he derives a sadistic pleasure from watching his sentient human toys flail around doing his bidding. Either way, it stands to reason that Q would be curious as to their progress. Riker can practically imagine him quivering with glee as he and his XO exchange details of what there is to see, and what they might do next.

Will casts Tom a meaningful glance, points at his comm badge and shapes the letter "Q" with his hands, but Tom has already figured it out. They both grimly nod their understanding, and reach for their comm badges almost simultaneously. Whatever leverage they might have over Q will disappear the moment he gets the answer he is looking for, and then will be nothing to guarantee that he will keep his bargain and return their ship to its normal state.

Tom holds his badge in front of his mouth for a moment. There's no time for subtlety; may as well call a spade a spade and let Q know they're on to him.

"Paris to Enterprise. We assume you can hear us … We realize you would probably like to keep tabs on us, but Q will be rather keen to know what's down here. So, frankly, we suspect the line is bugged. And we'd rather keep to ourselves for a bit."

Riker is momentarily puzzled by the reference to 'bugs' here in the ocean, but decides to ignore it. He too has something to say, and he remembers who is boss on the ship in his and Tom's absence.

"Deanna, if you can hear this, we'll be cutting out for a while. We'll try get back to you if there are problems, or else when we've solved Q's little conundrum _and _he gives us our ship back."

There's a crackle in the comm badges, and a new voice comes on, drenched in a cheeriness that fools no one.

_Q._

"Oh, don't be silly, boys. Why do that to yourselves? Really, my _dear_ Captain, if I had only known that you were so keen on chatting with the pretty little missus I would have made sure that they can talk back to you. There, I'll be nice. Chatter away, you little lovebirds."

Onboard the Enterprise, the pretty little missus doesn't hesitate to take advantage of the sudden access to communications.

"Will, Tom – can you hear us now?"

"Loud and clear," the Captain says grimly, and exchanges a meaningful look with Tom.

"We've started evacuating non-essential personnel and are working at stabilizing the ship. B'Elanna thinks she can buy us some extra time, but not much more than two ours, depending on wave action."

_There. The original two-sentence briefing. Make every second count._

"Understood and thanks."

Deanna turns and rounds on Q, who materialized on the bridge at the beginning of the exchange.

"Yu were saying?" she says sweetly, albeit a sharp edge of _what the hell do you want now?_ embedded not so deeply in her voice. She waves off Jorak and Ayala, who instinctively reached for their weapons, Ayala gripping his phaser more tightly than usual.

"Really, Counselor, I almost forgot that you poor little things can't talk to each other without help, and that you have to rely on these … primitive devices to help you out. My apologies. They're working now, you'll be happy to hear."

Q bows gracefully and insincerely, gesturing vaguely at Deanna's comm badge as he does so.

It is not lost on her, though, that he is vexed, and trying to hide it. Deanna is an empath, and can read emotions in facial expressions and body language just as well as she can pick them up from people's minds. Despite Q's human appearance being essentially a mock-up, his eagerness to preserve the comm link might as well be written across his forehead in Size 36 font.

Troi's eyes are like smoldering pieces of coal.

"Those _primitive devices, _as you call them,are what you need to keep an eye on what happens down there, aren't they? Just like we _puny humans_ are whom you want – no, _need_ - to find whatever it is you want? Well, that's just too bad, Q. So, unless and until you end this silly game of yours, you'll just have to wait for the outcome like the rest of us."

And so Deanna Troi makes the call. Her eyes lock with Q's now not-so-mocking blue ones as she does, although it is not him to whom her words are addressed.

"I agree, Will – we need to terminate the comm link, for the reasons you mentioned. Good luck to both of you. And us. Troi out."


	3. Chapter 3

III

In the blue depths of that unnamed ocean, Riker takes his badge - carefully, almost as if it were a precious gift from his wife - and places it in the sand beside Tom's, underneath one of the shells. The shell sits apart a little from the others, so hopefully they'll recognize it again when they need to get in contact with the Enterprise (provided Q hasn't broken the connection in a fit of pique in the meantime). Will manfully ignores the tantalizing pearlescent shimmer emanating from deep inside the mollusk, and carefully avoids getting near the fronds.

Tom looks over the clam bed; it is almost peaceful now, with the sand all settled and most shells open again. A small, soft cloud of translucent jellyfish drifts up from their temporary shelter among the big mollusks. Tom follows several small schools of yellow-and-purple fish with his eyes as they swim in the empty space the clams have created between the weeds, and then suddenly it hits him.

"The weeds," he says through the bubbles. They have to talk louder now that the communicators don't help anymore, and enunciate more clearly. He tries hard to ignore the way the water feels in the back of his throat when he talks, where it fees like it should be choking him but doesn't. Evolution-driven panic is a hard thing to overcome, and he really wishes Q had addressed that aspect when he pulled his transformation routine.

"They're quite neat, aren't they?"

"_Neat_?" Riker frowns. He's gotten used to his XO's often odd turn of phrase, but this observation seems rather … inappropriate to the seriousness of their situation. A bit like calling a Nausicaan _fuzzy_.

"Neatly planted," Tom elaborates, sensing his Captain's incredulity. "Sharp edges and clear space in between, almost like they're lining a street."

A street, if that's what it is, that is paved with enormous snapping clams. Obviously not one designed to be walked on, but swum over. Tom flippers upwards a little ways for a better vantage point.

"There's more of them, those roads, if that's what they are - over there, and there." He points to Riker's left and right, slowly, so as not to start spinning in the water. "All leading in the same direction, almost like spokes in a wheel."

"Could be just coincidence," Riker burbles. "The Forests of Eloria send out seedlings in a straight line. Looks like a spider web when you see it from a shuttle. Maybe that's how these clams procreate."

"Probably you're right," Tom agrees. "Let's follow the path anyway though, unless you have any better ideas, Captain."

Riker shrugs – he doesn't - and they swim off, careful not to get their flippered feet too close to the clams.

…..

They follow one of the clam paths quite a ways when suddenly it dips sharply, leading down what can only be described as an abyss. The walls of the crater-like opening are virtually covered with more clams, hanging on the near-vertical slope thanks to some small miracle of biology. Without a moment's thought, Tom shoots down into the deep bowl, Riker a mere afterthought in his wake.

It doesn't take long before the darkening blue of the ocean's depths gives way to shapes, which in turn resolve into what looks like …

"_Buildings_?" The word leaves Riker's mouth in a single silvery sphere of incredulity.

Tom doesn't say anything; it would probably come out as a bit smug, and his newly acquired (if still intermittent) sense of self-restraint tells him that now is not the time. Instead, he heads straight towards the first of two towers that stand atop a solid barbican. Crenellated walls extend on either side, beyond visual range; they are looking what seems like a fortress, fitted snugly into an indentation on the ocean floor that could have been made for it.

One of the towers seems damaged, almost as if a large creature has taken a bite out the top, although an enormous mound at the bottom – topped by weeds, and home to a myriad of tiny fish that swim in and out of individual boulders - suggests that probably the enemy was merely decay and old age. Or a hurricane that whipped up the seas to the very bottom, as they are capable of. Tom shudders at the thought.

_Storm coming._

The entire structure is encrusted throughout with corals, moss and things that look like plants but based on his biology classes are probably animals that just can't be bothered to move around much. The whole thing looks ancient, as if it has rested on the ocean floor for millennia, perhaps longer. The effect of the growths everywhere renders it difficult to make out individual stones or building blocks; all outlines are blunted with decay, as if poised to blur into legend before their very eyes.

"I wonder how long ago this sank," Riker breathes. "And why. No evidence of a major geological event."

The two Starfleet officers come to a halt before the open gate – of course there is no evidence of a door anymore, not even hinges. Tom's inner history buff takes over with a vengeance and he heads towards the opening; entirely forgetting his place in the Starfleet food chain, he beckons Riker to follow him.

"Whatever we're supposed to find down here, this is as good a place as any to start looking," he bubbles with excitement. "I mean, for all we know we're looking at the lost continent of Atlantis, or something like it. Maybe we can find out what made it tick, or got it drowned."

Belatedly, he adds, "Maybe that what he wants to know."

Riker shrugs and follows his enterprising XO; he really can't think of anything better to do and besides, it's pretty clear that Tom is the expert when it comes to diving off the deep end.

The scene that unfolds before them once they move past the barbican reminds Tom of those artificial environments some people create in decorative fish tanks, the kind that abounds in fake pirates' chests or sunken castles. Except _this_ sunken castle is the real thing – wide streets, lined with buildings in much the same state of repair and encrustation as the gateway, softened by things that have claimed it as their own.

Thousands of fish – in shapes that range from the thinnest, undulating string to spiked, tufted and veiled phantasms, all extravagantly coloured – drift in and out of the ruins in small clouds. A handful of bigger, darker specimen move in deliberate and solitary grace among them; occasionally one drops the you-can't-see-me-because-I'm-slow-and-harmless routine and snaps at an unsuspecting victim, resulting in the brief and spectacular panicked dispersal of a rainbow cloud or two. Playing the odds of their great numbers, the denizens of the schools soon recombine into their favourite formations though, and settle back into their well-rehearsed dance.

As Tom watches this silent world of deep aquamarine, schools change course as if on command, causing a sudden flash of yellow or purple-and-white as a thousand bellies or backs catch a drop of sunlight that has somehow found its way into the depths. With a beat of his heart he realizes just what he is looking at, and he wishes more than anything that Miral could be here to see what he does: The single tear that leaves his eye unbidden mingles with the salt water of his childhood dreams.

Riker senses his XO's distraction and grabs Tom's flipper to get his attention, not unsympathetically. He points at the cave-like entrance to one of the buildings, a vague shape as derelict and coral-rich as all the others.

"Did you see that?"

Maybe it was intended as a whisper, but the slowness with which the Captain utters the words just makes the bubbles larger as they drift up towards the surface.

"See what?"

Tom forces himself back into the now and looks to where Will is pointing, but all he can see is mossed stone, corals and water. And two long seaweeds on either end of the doorway that manage to look somewhat decorative - for all the world as if someone planted them there on purpose, like the potted cedars that his mother likes to fuss over on the front porch of his parents' estate.

"Something big just … poked its head out of the entrance, looked at us and then went back in really quickly."

Tom would shake his head, except he knows that any such extraneous movement just causes the body to change direction.

"Nope, nothing. But if there was something, the fish don't seem too bothered by it."

It's true, the curtain of drifting creatures regularly parts to avoid the two humans – or whatever it is Q has turned them into – but neither they nor the swarm of red-and-silver algae suckers feeding greedily off the moss beside that doorway have budged.

Tom swallows. If it was a predator that Will saw, surely the local vegetarians and krill eaters wouldn't be quite so complacent; he's seen what the snap of a single bully can do. He looks around, willing his eyes to penetrate first the darkness behind the door, then the vista behind the buildings within their ken, but he sees nothing that fits the Captain's description.

What he does see is something else entirely. It must have been a spire once, with a top that probably went missing eons ago, maybe even before this world was claimed by the ocean. Still, despite its loss the building that looms against the darkening, distant background is taller than any of the others, drawing his gaze almost magnetically.

Now Tom is not the anthropologist that Chakotay is, but even he can tell when a building has particular significance to a community (whoever that might have been). Size and location are usually the give-away. He points at the structure and says a single word, but the sea swallows any nuance as to whether it was meant to be a statement - or a question: "Temple."

Not awaiting the Captain's consent, Tom makes a few determined strokes towards the direction of what he firmly believes must be the place that holds the answers. Something small and dark emerges from between the clamshells that continue to line the open ground – he has started to think of them as cobble stones – and snaps at Tom's flippered feet. He kicks at it and keeps swimming.

The First Officer's evident desire to investigate a tall, crumbling structure may be crazy and dangerous, but Will really doesn't see much in the way of other options. And so he follows, with a reflexive grumble about Tom and his lousy ideas that leaves his mouth like a curtain of purest crystal.

…..

The corridors of the Enterprise are buzzing with activity. Security teams are busily directing traffic as the ship's well-trained personnel head for the escape pods. There is no mad scramble; anything more than ten minutes to evac is a luxury. Children and civilians first, as always.

Through the open door of the shuttle bay where he is modifying Flyer One with the help of a small engineering team – B'Elanna is busy with the stabilizers - Harry catches a glimpse of Libby and manages to hold her eye for a short but meaningful second. She is clutching Baby Tommy to her chest in the old-fashioned sling Tom and B'Elanna have given them, and is holding an excited and bouncy Miral Paris by the hand. Harry sighs deeply and turns his attention back to his work, cursing Q and all of his kind without holding back in the least.

The transporters, it turns out, still function within the confines of the ship, which makes it easier to load up the two tanks Dr. Crusher insisted they bring with them. A small oxygenation device is attached to each of them, and since they have to fit two of the tallest men on the ship, they pretty well take up the Flyer's entire aft section.

"You don't know what shape they might be in when you find them," Beverly had said quite reasonably, but Harry knows what his best friend will say when he gets stuffed into a glorified aquarium - especially while someone else gets to pilot the Flyer. First Officer or not, Tom Paris still has a major possessive streak when it comes to flying that particular shuttle and when you combine that with his well-documented claustrophobia, the picture of him in that tank is not a pretty one. There'll be water on the floor, that's for sure, and Harry for one doesn't feel like mopping it up.

The modifications finally complete, Mike Ayala and Marc O'Reilly climb in for pre-flight checks. The pilot wants to cut them short but this is important, and Harry as the ranking officer onboard tells him – politely – that since he hasn't done this before, he better familiarize himself with the changed instrumentation.

The ship's corridors are quiet when five minutes later, they cut through the force field and out of the airlock. Harry's breath hitches a little when he realizes that they never even entered the planet's atmosphere at all; but as a result, they also don't see the whitecaps that are being whipped up now by a strengthening breeze.

A thousand feet down, and the seabed is coming up, O'Reilly announces, his voice pregnant with disappointment. The stories he'd heard about the Commander's undersea flight – the water there apparently never ended, and there were wondrous sights, silent leviathans of the deep. They might as well be in a swimming pool here.

Harry, himself the most open of books, catches on rather quickly to the source of the pilot's dismay, and shoots him a reproachful look.

"Good," he says firmly. "At least Tom and the Captain don't have to deal with pressure issues on top of everything else."

O'Reilly, chastised, makes a show of nodding with guilty relief, and starts fiddling with the console to bring the Flyer to a standstill just above the bottom.

It doesn't take Ayala long to locate the command team's comm badges, and even less time to figure out that they are no longer attached to the command team.

'Must have ditched them to avoid Q spying," he says in that matter-of-fact, minimalist way of his that, as Harry has learned, never goes beyond the relevant and essential_. Like Seven of Nine without the complex syntax and no spandex_, as Tom likes to say.

Harry nods and returns his attention to the ops console. The news just keeps getting better.

"Guys - there is something down here all of a sudden that seems to be blocking out life signs. I can't even read normal fish anymore. When we came down, we came down right through a clump of big ones. Now, nothing."

Ayala does a few checks of his own, and confirms what Harry has noted.

"I can't even read _them_ anymore, either. And they didn't seem ready to leave their dinner."

"Sonics, thermal, theta band and other spectrums – all the other sensor readings either feed back, or get absorbed by the water. Can't even get the topography of the place. And it only started when we went below a hundred meters depth. Above that, things were fine."

Harry keeps trying, but he's beginning to get the idea that nothing the Flyer's instruments can throw out will work.

"Some water, huh," Ayala remarks drily. "No wonder even Q has trouble with it. Strange the comm badges worked as long as they did."

"Visual? Do we have visual? Maybe we could just _look. _They can't have gone far," O'Reilly suggests helpfully, and puts on the Flyer's external illumination without awaiting Harry's orders. It only takes a second for him to acknowledge that this was probably a mistake, as a thousand sharp points of light slice back at them through the screen, coming at them from the ocean floor like so many photonic knives.

'Screen off," Harry snaps, and it is only with the most heroic of efforts that he bites back an unkind expletive at the end of that. After all, it isn't like anyone could have anticipated that particular show. Luckily, the pilot still had his hand on the console and can reset the screen to dark by touch, since all three of them are temporarily blinded.

"Any ideas?" Harry asks, being fresh out. But he doesn't want to give up, either. His best friend and Captain are out there, and if Q tires of letting them play fish people, they will drown before they can get back to the surface. Despite O'Reilly's complaints they're pretty deep here and it would take some time to get back to the surface.

"Maybe we should just stay here and wait till they knock on the hull," Ayala suggests. "If we keep the parking lights on low they'll find us, even if _we_ can't track _them_."

And so they wait, Harry painfully aware that the remaining crew of the Enterprise will have one less vehicle available to escape the planet while they are sitting here idle on the ocean floor. The letter "Q" has never been as unpopular with Lieutenant Kim as it is today.

…..

By rights the interior of the temple – if that's what it is – should be dark, with only one or golden droplets of sunlight finding their way down through the open spire. But oddly, it isn't. The walls are emitting a greenish glow that reminds Tom of the inside of a Borg cube, except warmer, much more natural, and far more welcoming.

"Bioluminescence," he says wonderingly, more or less to himself, even as Riker pulls up beside him.

"Isn't that a bit unusual, this far down?"

Will is getting better at that whole talking underwater thing, or else Tom is getting used to filtering out the bubbles from where they form around the words.

"Yeah," he says, "it is."

May as well have a look – anything unusual is worth investigating in this search for a drop of truth in an ocean of questions. Tom shoots his long body up to the wall with a few quick flicks of his feet and a casual thrust of his arms.

Tom likes that motion, always has, and being able to just _do_ it without having to come up for air afterwards makes him feel ridiculously free. He resists the urge to spin a little as he glides through the water. But now he knows, _really knows_, how dolphins feel and why they sometimes shoot out of the water and do somersaults and twist in the air, for the sheer joy of it. He forces himself to bite back that feeling, forces himself to stay focused and professional.

But dammit, it feels good to be down here. Almost like something, or someone, is plucking at the very strands of his DNA like a harp, making his body and his mind _sing_.

Of course, he remembers the last time he felt this way, and the price he paid when he followed that siren lure … He reaches the wall and _this_ time, he is determined not to founder on the rocks. _ No, sir_. Tom Paris is a Starfleet officer, focused and professional, right down to the flippers.

But before turning to his chosen task he turns around – the buddy system of the diver, once ingrained, is as impossible to forget as Starfleet's rule on never going solo on an away mission. He is relieved to see that Riker is still well within visual range, having set to investigate something that almost looks like an altar in the centre of the temple, or whatever it is. He seems to be prodding it, looking for any kind of opening or indication as to its purpose underneath the layer of marine life that covers it. Tom waves to his Captain and turns around when he sees the answering wave.

The source of the mysterious light seems to be a kind of lichen – a layer of green algae under a crust of something that could be a fungus, sifting the water for microscopic nutrients and turning it into … light? Tom stares at it for a while, trying to figure how all this works, and comes to the amateurish – not to mention highly unorthodox - conclusion that what he is looking at must be a kind of reverse photosynthesis (would you call that photogenesis?). The perfect thing for a submerged world, where even the brightest day is filtered into shimmering twilight, and darkness a velvet black.

Perfectly sustainable energy. Could that be what Q is interested in? Hardly, Tom decides after about a nanosecond. Q can cause supernovas with a snap of his finger and light up galaxies with a flick of his wrist. But the thought crosses Tom's mind that Captain Janeway would have given her eyeteeth for something this simple to keep Voyager lit; Kes and her nurturing touch would have made it glow so, so bright.

Not to mention that Jarvis in biosciences would give his left testicle for a sample. It would sure be fun offering him a trade ...

So since he is already here anyway, Tom takes the back of his thumb nail to the wall to scrape off a little bit of the lichen, to stick into his pocket in case they get out of this adventure alive and with their scientific curiosity intact. It won't come off as easily as he thought though and so he puts his flippered feet on the ground and into the sand for additional purchase.

It doesn't take very long for him to realize that this was a mistake.

No sooner do the soles of his feet touch the seabed floor that he feels his skin penetrated by tiny spikes, and a sharp heartbeat's worth of pure pain lances through his entire nervous system. He suddenly feels rooted to the ground and all he can do is look down at the creature that emerges with a few lazy flaps from its hiding spot right under the sand.

What he sees is flat and red and purple, with a dozen or more arms – a bit like the pizza-sized starfish in the deep, crystalline waters off Haida Gwaii (why are those things even called_ fish_?). The far-too-many arms are encrusted with tiny spikes that now effectively pin him to the floor like some kind of evil Velcro. Paralysis spreads up his legs with each new heartbeat, and Tom silently curses his too-efficient circulatory system. The spikes will likely soon start secreting some vile substance, to dissolve and slowly digest what they caught; for the next few weeks, the thing will dine like a king.

As it turns out, he foundered after all.

Tom instinctively emits a rather large number of bubbles to attract Riker's attention; the buddy system should work both ways, but he feels his body shutting down already. With fading energy he starts to take inventory of what remains important just now: Regret at what he will not see again - the Enterprise, safe; his daughter, growing; B'Elanna's eyes, flashing - battles with a surprising satisfaction that it, that _he_, should be coming to an end here, in the sea.

The siren's song still fills his mind, seemingly louder and sweeter than ever - the song of the sea he first imagined he heard as a child. _Bloody cliché, _he thinks as he feels his muscles give out to the point where he can't keep upright, and starts sinking to the ground. _Surely you can come up with something more original at a time like this, Tommy Boy?_

With his eyes darkening now, Tom only vaguely senses the shadow that is approaching through the waters. It is coming for him like an arrow, the same way that he had shot towards that wall.

_Riker? No, not that good a swimmer._

His instincts balk, and he wants to reach for the phaser that sits on his hips but might as well be in the weapons locker on the Enterprise. He manages to twitch a little finger, but that's about it. Then his gills stop working too, and all of a sudden the possibility of drowning becomes very real.

He doesn't know when everything changes, but it does, and the panic stops - just stops. The hands that lift him off the ground and rip his feet off those lethal spikes are strong and the hair that brushes his shoulders, bare under that Starfleet-issue grey tank top, is long and soft, a liquid cloud.

Suddenly, the song is everywhere.


	4. Chapter 4

IV

Onboard the Enterprise, the skeleton crew has managed to stabilize the ship for now, but the clouds on the horizon are getting darker and closer – you can practically watch them churn. The waves are getting choppier, and higher; spray can be seen hitting the view screen until Deanna orders it dark. The most conservative predictions by science officers have the waves reaching the top of the saucer section within less than an hour, increasing the odds of the ship capsizing with each minute beyond that.

Harry Kim's suggestion to jettison extraneous weight has been taking up, and all cargo holds are empty. But with non-essential crew, escape pods, and all but two shuttles gone, there aren't many people left onboard to carry out an operation of sufficient magnitude to make any difference.

What else could they toss if they had the manpower, and with transporters off-line? Barring a few muttered smartass suggestions, about the only thing left are the warpcore or the entire star drive section - but B'Elanna has made it clear that while the saucer section can operate independently in space, it cannot lift off from the water on its own. So even if Q were to return the ship to its functions, the star drive section will be critical to getting it back into orbit.

Deanna feels okay about being in charge, but less good about her options. The last time she was in charge of the ship, she crashed it. For perfectly valid reasons and to good effect, of course, but still … She's often heard Tom's and B'Elanna's jokes about their former XO and his record with Voyager's shuttles, and the last thing she wants is a reputation for destroying Galaxy-class ships.

Her mood is not assisted by the sudden appearance of Q on the bridge, practically rubbing his hands with glee.

"Time's a-ticking," he reminds people with a big smile, his affability fooling no one. "Tic-toc, tic-toc."

Before Deanna can respond, Jorak speaks up, his eyebrow raised like Thor's hammer.

"If your powers are as extensive as you claim, sir, then you should be able to extend the time available to the command team for their explorations. You are also, apparently, quite capable of calming this ocean. I recommend you do so. Your pre-occupation with forcing Captain Riker and Commander Paris to accomplish a task _you_ wish them to complete, within a fixed time limit and under stressful circumstances, is neither logical nor is it likely to meet with success."

Q turns around and takes the tactical officer's measure. He doesn't bother raising his eyebrows, just looks Jorak up and down as if he were a particularly unremarkable crawling insect.

"Of course," he drawls. "You're a _Vulcan_. How _typical_. How _utterly_ _cliché_. You people have never quite grasped the concept of_ fun_, have you?"

Q turns back, making it absolutely clear that Jorak has used up his 0.0035 nanoseconds of privileged attention, and flashes another insouciant grin at Deanna.

"Besides, people like your Will and Kathy's Helmboy work _much_ better under pressure. How often have they escaped _this_ corrosive nebula or _that_ imploding anomaly _just_ before it closed up on them, or managed to defeat some alien menace _just_ before the self-destruct countdown hits zero? Let's face it, they get off on this. I'm doing them a favour."

He leers a little. Actually, more than a little. His lower lip quivers a bit as a pink tongue, slightly longer than in your average human, runs across it.

"And you, too. You and Q's favourite little Klingon lady, well, you always get to reap the benefits afterwards, don't you? All that adrenaline left over, and no place to put it but …"

Deanna secretly suspects he's right, but this is one conversation she is _not_ having on the bridge, and certainly not with Q. Besides, they haven't won yet, and things don't really look all that good right now. She gives him a black-eyed glare, and asks the obvious question.

"And just how are you going to find out whether they have any answers for you, if _we_ can't reach them down there, and _you_ have no eyes into the ocean?"

Q studies his fingernails again – a habit he seems to have developed during the time he vexed Kathryn Janeway in the Delta Quadrant, Troi suspects – but this time he gives a little smirk as he looks up, eyebrows raised in surprise.

"You sent down one of your little boats, didn't you? I'm fairly certain that _something_ or _someone_ will pop up to report, and help out. Life preservers, perhaps?"

He chuckles at a joke only he understands.

Troi has had enough. She puts her hands on her hips and channels her mother.

"So if you aren't interested in making this little … charade of yours a bit more workable and less life-threatening, you megalomaniacal little jerk, why exactly are you here? Just to gloat? Haven't you got anything better to do?"

Q's latest smile is pitched somewhere between supercilious and nonchalant, but fails at both.

"Temper, temper, counselor. I saw that little cloud of escape pods and thought I'd check in, see how things are going. But obviously there's nothing to report yet. I'll be getting on then. Just call me when you want to chat. Ta-ta!"

As the air on the bridge collapses in on itself in the precise spot where Q was standing until a moment ago, Deanna Troi clenches her hands into a fist and says something very unlady-like.

But then it hits her, and her eyes narrow in calculation. She can't read him very well – he has defensive shielding that her mind cannot penetrate unless he wishes it to – but his words and body language (however human-based for now, it's what she's got to work with) tell a story of their own.

And this is what it says: For an omnipotent being, Q really does have rather limited access to this planet. It seems to really bother him, like it did Will the one evening he had four separate flushes but could ever quite land the Royal one. And somehow, for Q fear of water doesn't quite seem explanation enough.

She strums her fingers on the side of the Captain's chair as she refuses to consider just how the powers of whatever can stymie a Q might be affecting the Enterprise's command team.

…..

When Tom opens his eyes, the first thing he sees is Riker, looming over him, concern evident in his eyes.

"Feel any better?" the Captain bubbles.

Tom gives the question the careful consideration it deserves and takes inventory, starting with his head, which seems to be clearing, and his gills, which are functioning again. A roll call of his senses finds his mouth full of something bitter, like a piece of gooey moss. _Medicine of some kind? _He spits it out, having determined that it must have done its thing, whatever it was, and how on Earth Riker knew which piece of kelp wouldn't kill him. Eventually, his stock-taking reaches his feet, only to register a curious tickling sensation.

He looks down to see a small swarm of brightly coloured tiny fish, all rather purposefully nibbling at the bottom of his flippers. His instincts scream at him to pull back and kick them away, but the feeling is actually not unpleasant - in stark contrast to what the spiky thing did to him originally. More importantly, the residual pain he feels is steadily receding under the creatures' ministrations, almost as if they are erasing all evidence of his recent experience. One satisfied customer makes off with what looks like one of the barbs that are embedded in his flesh; another quickly takes his place.

Tom decides it's probably in his best interest to let them carry on for now, and casts a what-the-hell-happened-here-exactly look at Riker. The latter points silently to his left, with an usually soft smile that barely shows his impressive canines. Whatever is there, the Captain is clearly not afraid of it – quite the contrary.

But Tom cannot possibly be prepared for what he sees, not at all, and his mouth falls open in wonder.

A shape, obviously humanoid, floats up to him, palms turned up in silent greeting. The green glow given off by the mossy walls is reflected in a pair of enormous unblinking eyes of similar colour. A cloud of dark blue hair undulates around the woman's form like a soft, floating corona.

A woman.

The creature is clearly female, based on the pair of beautifully shaped – and unselfconsciously uncovered - breasts that under any other circumstances would have utterly captivated and derailed Tom's mind. Her skin is pale turquoise, almost translucent; blue lips are curled in a small smile. Her feet … no, wait - there are no feet. The graceful shape tapers into what looks like a long tail, covered in shimmering scales that range in colour from palest opalescent silver to darkest sapphire at the finely finned tail.

She opens her mouth and Tom's mind fills with the song he thought he had only imagined – lilting and beautiful, soothing, a little sad.

He nods wordlessly and smiles, understanding both her welcome and her sorrow at his pain, and holds perfectly still as her long and graceful fingers start to run lightly over his face, his hair, his shoulders, lingering a little over his Starfleet issue singlet. This deep down and away from the light, eyesight is clearly not enough and he knows he owes her this tactile exploration. He gets a little nervous for a moment when her hands slide lower, but she seems far more interested in the miracle of his legs than she is in … other parts.

When Riker emits a little snort at his XO's evident discomfort, Tom frowns a grim warning. He's heard a number of the Captain's own conquest stories by now, over a few too many Romulan ales, ranging from _Fun With Andorians And Other Multi- or Non-Sexed Aliens_, to _(Pssst!) Getting It On With Crusher Using The Alien Possession Excuse_, and he is absolutely not above using any or all of them for blackmail. If there is one story B'Elanna Torres will _never_ hear, it's the one about _The Time Tom Paris Got Felt Up By A Mermaid (Wearing His Wedding Ring)_.

Riker gets the message quickly, sobers up, and straightens his features back into Serious Captain mode.

"It must have been her I saw moving in that building," he blubs, all matter-of-fact now. "She came as soon as you got in trouble. Practically knocked me aside – that tail of hers packs quite a punch."

_Of course she would come. Mermaids help stranded sailors, don't they? _

Children's tales, children's miracles, children's dreams. Tom shakes his head, his father's voice ringing in his ears: _Don't be ridiculous, Thomas._ _There's no such thing as mermaids._

He shakes his head again to get the voice out of his head – _but there are, Dad, there must be!_ - and looks up into the creature's emerald eyes. He is struck by their gentleness, their depth, their earnest curiosity.

He smiles, and his utter delight in the encounter shines out of his eyes and into hers. He looks over to Riker, and his Captain's smile tells him he hears the song too, even as he seems content to let Tom have the lead in the encounter for now.

"Thank you for saving my life," Tom says simply, trying to convey, somehow, the wonder and gratitude he feels. He wishes he could sing back to her but he knows he can't. So instead, he reaches for her hand – slowly, so as not to spook her - and softly caresses her fingers, to say with his touch and his eyes what he cannot express in a language she would understand.

He is gratified to see her smile in return. She lifts his hand close to her face and examines it closely, squeezing his nails and spreading his fingers, marveling at the lack of webbing between them. Again and again she dips her finger into the gap between his fingers, her song becoming an excited twitter.

"I guess you don't get many alien visitors down here, do you?" he says, trying to put a smile into his voice – and into his thoughts, in case she can read them. Absurdly, the words _we come in peace_ cross his mind, and the classic images of first contact.

With a smile, he tries to send her the basics, hopes she can hear his thoughts:

_We're from far away. Glad to meet you. Yours is a beautiful world. Different from mine, but not unfamiliar._

He tries to think his name at her but realize that probably won't work (how do you think 'Tom'?) What he is certainly isn't fit to be turned into song, and any images of himself that he could send her won't give her anything to call him beyond _partly reconstructed failure_. So he relies on the tried and true method of pointing at his chest and saying "Tom" a few times, watching the silvery spheres drift up towards the surface.

She looks at him – the same way Miral would at a particularly cute furry animal – but then she repeats his gesture and sings into his mind. Obviously, if this is the way you communicate on a daily basis it's a lot easier to think your name, and he knows beyond certainty that hers is "Alarra." He repeats it back, first in his thoughts and then wrapped into bubbles; her answering smile is a flash of pearls.

But then, just like that, Alarra lets go of his hand. She touches his singlet again and then raises her fingers to her mouth, suppressing what looks for all in the world like a giggle. Her tail starts waving up and down excitedly (like a mammal's, Tom registers vaguely, not side-to-side like that of a fish) and she darts off towards the broken spire. She moves with both grace and speed, that powerful tail driving her on, and the dark waters remove her quickly from their sight.

"What'd you do? Scare her off?" Riker asks when they are alone.

"Starfleet issue underwear usually has that effect," Tom replies. The he sobers a little.

"I tried to tell her 'thank you', and that we were visitors. I had a feeling she understood me, and I'm pretty sure she told me her name. _Alarra. _ I don't know, Will, what's it like when Deanna talks to you, and you to her?"

Will knows what he means by 'talk' – telepathic or empathic communication - and shrugs.

"I hear her, but it's not words. _Feel_ her, inside of me. And she always gets what I try to let her know or feel. It's hard to describe. But we always know when the other understands."

Tom nods to himself. Yes, you just know._ Alarra _– the truth is in his understanding_._

But with his unexpected saviour gone, they really need to focus on their task, whatever it is. Will looks at his tricorder. An hour has passed, at least; in this timeless underwater world, it might as well have been an eternity. Up top, they suspect, the seas have started to churn.

"Now what?" Tom asks. He's fresh out of ideas as to what to look for, and where. Having your brain addled by poison and then filled with a childhood (and fine, somewhat adolescent) fantasy will do that to a man, he figures, so he doesn't exactly feel apologetic about it.

"Did you get anything from that altar thing you were looking at before I almost got killed, Captain?"

Riker shakes his head in the negative.

"Q likes to study people, races. But if that altar was ever anything more than a hunk of stone, it isn't anymore. And if there's anything here that even _remotely _looked like the technology of an advanced civilization, it's long since been overgrown by corals."

That was a long sentence for underwater talking, and Tom is impressed at how much Riker's technique has improved. But the observation the Captain just made doesn't exactly help them, does it. Tom touches the wall – keeping a wary eye on the sand at the bottom, lest the camouflaged spiky thing has family close by – and runs his fingers along the stone. _There are no seams._

The Captain continues his briefing. Clearly, once he had assured himself that their surprise rescuer was only interested in Tom's survival and not his nutritional properties, he let her go about it and continued looking for that enigmatic _something _that might make Q return their ship. Without, it appears, much success.

"Another thing I haven't seen, though, is any indication that this place once used to be above water. Everything looks like it _belongs_ here."

Of course. The Captain is right. It's so easy to assume that living aboveground is everyone's _normal_, that there had to have been some catastrophe to bring this place underwater.

No. This crumbling town, this ancient fortress – they're not the drowned remnants of something that's lost to another world. They are what they are, their own being, their own truth. And so he looks much more closely, beyond the easy assumptions of his world's architectural vernacular (a temple, a fortress, a gate) to their essence.

"Yeah, you're right. These walls – they're not built, see? They've been _grown_, like those hedges in Normandy, only a lot more durable. Here, look, you can see it. Corals, used to trap sand and shells. Trained to grow in a certain way, in certain shapes."

Tom realizes he is starting to babble with excitement and slows down, forces himself to contain the mixture of awe and wonder he feels as he looks around the decaying underwater city. This _is_ the sea, its heart and its soul, a home and a refuge.

"It must have taken eons to build …." He corrects himself quickly. "No, to _create_ all this."

Riker swims over. He's getting better at that, too, Tom notices – a natural athlete and a quick learner. Tom points out the layers of calcified marine life that make up the wall, and Riker nods his agreement.

"And a few more eons to let it go. Wonder what it looked like in its heyday, and what happened."

The Captain points at the unruly growths that have taken over the once-neat walls and the crumbling spire. Tom shrugs, and frowns.

"Maybe the makers stopped caring?"

There's a sudden movement in the water – no, that's not quite right. Down this deep there isn't really a current, but perhaps among the marine senses Q bestowed upon them there's one that alerts them to the tiny fluctuations that suggest something big is displacing water. And its doing it_ towards where they are_.

Whatever it is they can feel, they turn at the same time, ready for the worst.

Out of the blue depths beyond the broken spire, dark shadows glide towards them at considerable speed. Riker grips Tom's arm; the shapes are still far enough away that perhaps they could make a break for it. But the XO shakes his head almost immediately.

"The tails, Will. Up and down, not sideways. Those aren't fish – they're … _her _people."

He can't bring himself to say the word, even though he's thought it a few times now and here is perhaps the best – the only - place to use it without sounding ridiculous.

_Merpeople._

A few heartbeats later – so quickly that it's pretty obvious they wouldn't have been able to get away even if they'd tried – a whole swarm of humanoid forms surrounds them, and a chorus of song envelops Tom's mind. They are beautiful, there is no doubt about it: fine features dominated by enormous, shining, unblinking eyes; well-defined muscles and smooth skin on both males and females; iridescent tails, in colours ranging from deepest ruby to palest aquamarine, with all jewel tones in between.

Alarra is with them, in the lead, her smile a glow in the darkening light of the ocean floor as she leads her people towards her discovery. She swims up to Tom without hesitation and reaches for his hand, nudging him to demonstrate his un-webbed fingers to a group of her companions, most of them female.

Next she grabs a fistful of his grey singlet, pulls on it a little as if to prove to her friends that it isn't attached to Tom. The melody in his head turns into a peal of silver notes. Do mermaids giggle?

He notices with some relief then that their visitors seem to find something of interest in the Captain, as well. Apparently, facial hair is not common undersea (no doubt it would trap some unwanted flotsam) and for a few merciful moments Riker's beard eclipses everything else there is to see in the two humans.

Surrounded by a swarm of merfolk, feeling their gentle, prodding touches on his skin and their laughter in his mind, he is reminded of the welcome he receives when he steps into the nursery to retrieve Miral. The squeals of delight, the pattering feet, her arms flying around his legs. That innocent quality he noted in the first woman's eyes … well, it's in all of their eyes and suddenly he understands, with a clarity that takes his breath away. He turns to Riker.

"They're children, Captain. _Ancient_ children."

For some reason the paradox of that statement doesn't faze him in the least, and he is relieved to see that it doesn't seem to bother the Captain, either. Riker nods, slowly, deliberately.

They are sentient, these beings of the sea, of that the two officers have doubt, and more than empathic – the song that fills their minds is a crescendo of excitement, welcome and delight. But if the serenity of their eyes and the crumbling state of the world they inhabit are any indication, it has been a long time since any of their kind has lifted a hand to build, to make, or to do.

They don't live to a purpose. They just … _are_.

And that, as far as Tom is concerned, is enough.

But are they what they came here to find?

A sudden current stirs the weeds at the edges of the building and the sand swirls a little. The rainbow clouds of fish have disappeared, a few stragglers twinkling away and into small crevices in the walls and buildings around them as he watches.

The mood among their hosts changes without warning. Eyes widen, turn fearful – then determined. Tails are beginning to lash and a number of their visitors peel off without ceremony and head towards whatever is to be found past the spire. Alarra tugs on Tom's singlet, motioning him to follow.

Tom turns to Riker, who casts a calculating look upwards. The droplets and beams of sunlight have gone, and the water's ceiling looks as dark as the depths around them.

"The storm is here." The Captain states a fact, not a supposition. "We have to go back up."

Tom nods his assent. If what they found is not what Q wants, so be it. He wasn't very specific in what he was looking for, and whatever they tell him, it will have to do.

Alarra is getting desperate now. She grabs Tom's arm and starts to drag him in the direction of the spire with unmistakable urgency.

"I'm sorry, Alarra." He tries to make her see, points upwards, fills his mind with images of stars, B'Elanna and Miral – a song of a colour so different from hers, but still, with an echo of the sea.

"I have to go back."

She seems to understand, and the look of desolation on her face is heartbreaking. The song in his mind turns into a dirge, with spikes of something that can only be fear, and warning. Clearly, the storms on this world are sufficiently powerful to be felt down here, and she wants him and Riker to take shelter.

All her companions have fled by now, but yet she seems reluctant to leave. A thought strikes Tom then, and with a swift movement he pulls the singlet over his head and gives it to Alarra.

"Here, take this. For your dress-up box, or when you want to freak out your friends."

More somberly, he adds, "Something to remember us by."

Alarra takes the unpretentious gift as if it was an untold fortune, weaving her hands through it before trying to pull it over her head, the way she has seen Tom take it off. She gets stuck in one of the armholes and he has to help her out.

"Looks a lot better on you than it did on me," he says with a smile, even as he senses Riker getting impatient.

"Sorry, got to go."

He fishes for the right kind of salutation, something appropriate; the best thing he can come up with is, "Live long and prosper."

It seems to do, because she flicks her tail and darts off.

"Wonder what we'll find when we get to the top," Riker remarks as they start their ascent out of the bowl, up and up, past the clamshell-lined walls. Already, the waters are starting to pull at them.

"To be honest, I'd rather not think about it," Tom replies. But then he becomes aware of an urgent melody in this mind, three notes almost like a claxon, and he slows down briefly to look back.

Alarra rises out of the depths, waving to them to stop.

Tom's singlet flutters a little on her lithe torso, so much smaller than his, but it doesn't seem to bother her. She is here on a mission, it seems, and obviously in a hurry. Her small hand extends towards him, closed at first, but then her webbed fingers open like a flower or one of the anemones of the deep. The gesture is unmistakable – _here, take this._

Cradled in the palm of her pale blue hand is a large, white, shimmering pearl, like the one that almost cost Riker his arm. Tom is rendered momentarily speechless by the gift - certainly, in terms of exchange value, his must now rank as the single most valuable Starfleet tank top in history. But far, far more than that, he is touched by the sincerity and artlessness with which the gift is offered – not an exchange, after all.

A token.

"Remember," her simple song fills his mind, and his heart.

"Remember."

And then she is gone, and Tom scrambles to catch up with his Captain as they head up, into churning, blackening waters.


	5. Chapter 5

V.

On the bridge of the Enterprise, the inertial dampeners have reached their limits and can no longer keep up with the swelling seas. It's one thing for the sensors to compensate for movement in a vacuum and at zero grav - quite another when the physical forces of a planet have the ship in their watery grip. Deanna is grateful for Bev Crusher's hypo spray without which she would doubtless be whimpering imprecations in a corner somewhere. Even so, she feels a debilitating nausea as the ship heaves and sags under her feet.

"Hail the Flyer again," she gasps, holding on to the arms of the Captain's chair and wondering for the thousandth time why starship technology ever discarded seat restraints. Was it hubris, or mere stupidity?

Jorak, unusually green even for a Vulcan but steady as ever, taps in the necessary commands. Harry Kim comes on line instantly.

"No sign of the Captain and Commander yet," he intones. "We can feel the storm down here, too, though. How much time do we have left?"

Deanna swallows hard. This is the question she has not wanted to think about, but knows she must answer. B'Elanna has confirmed that the ... things Q has turned her engines into are incapable of providing sufficient lift to get the ship out of the water; if there is to be any chance for the survival of the remaining crew, they will need to pile into the two remaining shuttles.

One of which is currently at the bottom of the ocean, hoping to bring in her husband and First Officer … friend.

She looks over at Jorak, whose eyes keep running over the figures the sensors give him, coolly watching them inch towards the unacceptable.

"Seventeen minutes," he says.

_Seventeen minutes to what? _

Deanna doesn't want to remember that, either, but she knows. It is an axiom of nature, as inalterable as the forces that give birth to and cause the death of stars, that in the battle between man-made things and water, water will always win. And Deanna knows very well that there will be no exception made for her, for them, today.

_Hull breach. _Seventeen minutes to hull breach.

She comes to a decision then and taps the comm switch.

"Troi to Engineering. B'Elanna, get your people out and into Flyer Two. Henley and Walker will meet you there. Go into orbit and hold."

She nods to the pilot, who clasps the conn briefly in silent farewell before rising; the ensign who'd taken over Ops in Harry's absence is already out the door, swaying and staggering, holding onto the walls as best he can. This leaves Deanna and Jorak on the bridge – the rule says there have to be two or she would have sent him away too, not that he would have gone.

Into the silence of the now nearly empty bridge, she tells Harry to surface after five minutes. Maybe the transporters will work again when the Flyer comes for them ... They better, because docking is no longer an option.

…..

They've crested the bowl now, a lot faster than the diving manuals recommend, but Tom figures that gill-breathing will counteract the bends they could otherwise expect. He looks back down into the depths briefly, but can't make out anything beyond darkness.

A bubbling noise to his left draws his attention; the Captain must have seen something.

"Lights."

Sure enough, the darkening sea is pierced by thin beams of light, too sharp to be anything other than man-made. _One of the Flyers._ In the absence of communications, Deanna must have sent reinforcements to keep an eye on them.

Tom appreciates the sentiment, but … "How in hell are we supposed to get _inside_?" he asks, but Riker is already on his way to the shuttle.

Since Tom is the faster swimmer, he decides to take a small detour and pick up their communicators. They're half covered in sand now, thanks to the swirling current caused by the storm above, but he does find them relatively quickly. Lacking both a shirt and the time to pin the badge anywhere else, he palms one and sticks the other into the same pocket with Alarra's pearl.

Heading towards the Flyer, he taps his badge experimentally.

"Hey, Harry?"

Not the most formal of greetings, but he's swimming pretty fast now and doesn't have a lot of breath to spare, not even for a _why the hell are you down here, exactly?_

"Tom?" The relief in his best friend's voice would be flattering at any other time. "You close?"

"Getting there. The Captain should be on top of you by now."

Riker has indeed reached the Flyer; for want of a better option, he knocks on the hull to confirm his presence to those inside. Tried and true, _shave-and-a-haircut-ten-cents_. They won't be able to hear him, of course – it'd be a pretty shitty shuttle if its walls were that thin – but the sensors pick up the vibrations as the unnatural thing they are; Ayala, who's been waiting for this, confirms the external presence almost immediately.

"Do we have transporters?" Harry asks, hoping against hope. Ayala shakes his head.

"Nope. But how can we let Q know that …"

"The communicators," Harry's eyes narrow and his jaw clenches with determination. "They're online again."

He's always been solution-oriented guy, and this one is pretty obvious: _Dangle the bait. The shark's waiting._

"Kim to away team," he says, enunciating each syllable very clearly for the benefit of the potential line squatter and hoping he's paying attention.

"I guess you must have found what Q sent you down there for? Unfortunately, we can't get you onboard where you can tell anyone about it. Transporters are still offline."

There's a moment of silence, and then Riker's voice comes on, speaking into the comm badge Tom has handed to him. The Captain gets it right away, but he decides he doesn't really have the time to be surreptitious.

"Quite correct, Lieutenant. So Q, if you're listening to this, and I hope you are, in the interest of speed, get us out of the fish costumes and into the Flyer so we can tell you what we learned and end this nonsense."

They don't have long to wait. Q's voice comes on, petulant as ever but with a bit of an edge.

"Are you asking what I think you are, _mon capitain_? That I fix your transporters for you? What am I, your handyman? Well, I certainly won't until you make an effort and come to the surface."

Interesting, if not unexpected. Riker can't resist twisting the barb a little.

"_Won't_, or _can't_, Q?"

But Harry picks this moment to pass on a piece of critical information to the command team, even if it means disrupting this barbed exchange and letting Q off the hook.

"Captain, whether we have transporters or not, we do need to surface in … well, kind of _now_, actually."

Riker has learned the art of negotiation from a master and knows that the best deals are made when your opponent wants the exact same thing you do - if for different reasons - and you can sell him mutual satisfaction for a good price. It probably won't work here, but it's sure worth trying.

"Fine. We'll go back up then, Q, if it helps you snap your fingers better. Do something about the weather though, will you."

Getting up quickly is, of course, a bit of a problem in its own right. With no obvious way for the command team to get into the Flyer, ascent speed will be limited to whatever push Tom and Will can get out of their flippered feet.

It's a good thing is, then, that most Starfleet officers are lateral thinkers, and that Tom has always liked to waterski.

"We'll hang on to the landing struts and hitch a ride up with you," he instructs Harry; Riker nods. They both pocket their comm badges - presumably they will need both hands for this – but not before Riker mutters a plea to some unknown deity that involves rather more blasphemy than incantation.

O'Reilly, as it turns out, understands the challenge of balancing the need for speed with the limits of human endurance. Still, the Flyer lifts off the sandy bottom none too smoothly, because there is now a considerable current, brought on by the roiling seas above. The shuttle bucks a few times and almost shakes them off twice; Will and Tom, one on each side, cling to the landing struts as best they can. At least letting go won't be the disaster it would be if they were airborne, but the speed of the ascent rather flattens their gills and makes it hard to breathe.

Things get hairy for a moment there when the Flyer comes up through that school of Very Toothy Things thye'd left behind on their way down. The sharks, or whatever they are, seem to have finished their phasered cousin and are cruising hopefully for more edibles to come their way in the churning waters. But Harry sees them coming on the sensor and fires off a few discouraging scatter shots; someone else will dine well in due course, and all Tom and Will have to do is avoid being brushed off the struts by floating corpses.

Fortunately, this isn't Monea and they were only a couple of klicks down, not at the center of a planet. About a hundred meters from the surface, Ayala breaks into a fleeting, blink-and-you-miss-it grin.

"Transporters online," he intones. "I have them."

Nobody thanks Q for the restoration, especially as it turns out he left out a critical part. When the unmistakable tingle of the transporter fills the small cabin, it is followed by the sound of sloshing water that is in turn quickly drowned out by choking and gasping noises.

"Oh, shit." Ayala flushes with embarrassment. "Sorry, sirs. I thought …."

His fingers dance across the panel and the tingle comes back, this time followed by two splashes in the aft cabin.

Both Tom and Will flap around in surprise – neither had apparently given much thought to what beaming aboard might entail for them if it wasn't accompanied by full DNA reconstruction. Tom suppresses a brief upswell of panic when he realizes he's in a glass box now, but when he takes his first breath and finds the gills still working, the tank seems to be clearly the lesser of two evils.

Harry orders O'Reilly to complete the ascent; at least with transporters back online, they won't have to dock with the Enterprise to evac the remaining crew. But no sooner has the Flyer broken surface that there's a *pop* in the aft cabin and Q appears. He peeks over the edge of Riker's tank with a smile, rubbing his hands with a glee that doesn't appear entirely sincere.

"So, _mon capitain_, please, report!"

Now, unlike his XO, Will Riker doesn't swear very often, but when he does he usually makes it count. And right now he's not very happy. He sticks his head out of the water, and to hell with the fact that he can't breathe in while it's there.

"Fuck you, Q. You want to know what we found? Fix us the fuck up and put us back on our ship or you'll get _nothing._ Fucking _nada_, you hear?"

He follows this with a raunchy curse in Klingon, dips his head back underwater and takes a breath.

Tom is impressed enough to simply await developments; Q seems to be content to ignore him for the moment anyway, and in fact seems to be mumbling a questioning "Us?" Besides, Tom really doesn't know what he might say to the guy, and things might just get worse if he opened his mouth. He still blames himself a little for getting them into this predicament in the first place, although Riker has done his best to let him off the hook and it looks like Q would probably have done what he did anyway.

Q makes up his mind surprisingly quickly. Tom watches as Riker sits up, spitting and retching out the water he obviously just inhaled into normally functioning lungs, and tries to climb out of the tank – apparently not an easy feat, given slippery surfaces and high edges, not to mention trousers soaked in water. But Riker is only halfway through the attempt, when he disappears. There's no transporter tingle; Q must have taken him off the shuttle.

As a sudden silence descends on the Flyer, Tom realizes he is alone.

…..

Deanna gasps with relief at the return of the away team, and if she doesn't run up to Will it's only because the latest wave to wash over the Enterprise's saucer section has caused the floor to tilt up by nearly forty degrees.

Still, as she hangs on to her chair, she notes the absence of Tom Paris. And, of course, the fact that the team must have abandoned the Flyer when they were transported over.

"Is Tom still on the Flyer?" Deanna adds one and one, arriving at two just as a new wave of nausea hits her.

But Q, who has arrived with the away team, is clearly not interested in the whereabouts of insignificant shuttles, nor does he seem inclined for now to restore the ship to its normal element. Being on a world that seems immune to his powers of manipulation – and having been called on that fact by Riker - has soured his mood considerably.

Q stands there in the middle and stares at Will, who is still wet and dressed only in his Starfleet pants and singlet, but blessedly gill-free and possessed of ordinary (albeit Size 13) feet.

"So, Captain, tell me – what did you manage to find?"

…..

On the Flyer, alone in his tank, Tom takes rapid stock of his situation. And this is what he arrives at:

#1: Time's a-ticking. #2: Harry, Ayala and Riker were as concerned with his welfare as they were with the Captain's. #3: Q, on the other hand, despite having hand-picked him to help find the answer to a mystery he could not solve himself seems to have forgotten about his existence altogether. #4: This latest development might have something to do with the mystery they'd been sent to solve, and if so, he better find the answer quick (see #1).

The tank he's in – put there by Crusher, he assumes, given it's her job to think of such things - is narrow, and his arms are pretty much stuck to his sides. As he splays his fingers in frustration at his predicament, his hand brushes up against something in his pocket. Something big, and hard, and round.

_Alarra's pearl._

A sudden light pops on inside his head. Actually, it's more like fireworks going off, and if this were a movie there'd be a swell of trumpets and violins to herald his epiphany.

_He knows exactly what Q is looking for._

Tom takes one last deep underwater breath and sits up in his tank, climbs out with far less grace than urgency, and pads into the main cabin as quickly as his flippered feet permit. He takes the pearl out of his pocket, puts it on the ops console and enters the transport coordinates for the bridge, hoping that Q will be at the other end interested to hear what he has to say.

He materializes on the bridge pearl-less, wet and on his knees, already gasping for air his lungs cannot process. He flashes back again to that time on the floor of Voyager's mess hall, B'Elanna's concerned face swimming before him. The only difference, really, is the absence of the taste of Neelix' coffee in his mouth and the fact that the deck beneath him seems to come at him from several directions at once.

Everyone, including Q, spins around at the sudden sound.

Not having received an answer to his question from Riker, and watching Deanna's anguished empathic reaction to Tom's distress and Harry's attempts to get to his best friend across the heaving floor, Q gets a downright nasty glint in his eyes.

"Ah," he says, watching the convulsing First Officer with studied indifference. "Helmboy. Of course. I almost forgot about _him_. He seems to be in some sort of trouble, I see?"

This is actually a bit of an understatement: Tom, who hadn't quite thought through what might happen if Q didn't change him back immediately, is turning bluish and his movements are growing weaker.

Q turns back to Riker, fakes a yawn and drawls, "What do you think? Should I help him?"

Now Will Riker would be the first to admit that he is a man of many vices, but since he is damned good at just about everything he's ever set his mind to, some of those vices have become so finely honed that they have morphed into unintended virtues. When it comes to gambling, he has perfected his poker skills on the holodeck against the likes of Stu Ungar and Chip Reese and live against a trained empath; in the process, he has learned how to turn a really shitty hand into a table-clearing bluff. He fixes Q with a clear and steady blue-eyed gaze.

"You might want to, if you want to get your story. He's a much better swimmer than me and got a lot further than I did. So yeah, it's really him you want to talk to. And he'll be needing his breath for that."

Q must know he's being had, or at least suspect it. He stares back at Riker, who has assumes a loose-kneed fighter's stance against the steady motion of the ship and who doesn't blink despite the gasping, choking sounds emanating from the floor behind the helm console.

After an interminable amount of time Q clenches his jaw and snaps his fingers, contemptuously, behind his back. Tom gives a deep shuddering breath, once, twice, three times and looks up at Q. He stays on the floor, sitting with his back to the conn since the deck hasn't stopped heaving, and getting up seems rather a waste of time.

"Well?" drawls Q. "You were saying, _Commander_?"

And so it comes down to Tom to make the gambit. Riker's play means _he_ can't talk substance anymore, or else Q might just reverse Tom's DNA fix in a peeve. A quick headshake from the Captain make that perfectly clear.

Seeing that supercilious and arrogant smirk; having almost died a few seconds ago; feeling the tortured ship buck and groan under forces it was never designed to fight; knowing that his daughter is stuck in an escape pod without either of her parents millions of kilometers away - all things considered, Tom wants nothing more than to stick Q's head into that churning ocean in which his omnipotence has no sway, and hold it underwater for a millennium or whatever it takes to rid the universe of this quantum pest. But he knows that his chances of success are minuscule and so he contents himself with glaring his own form of withering contempt at Mr. Universe.

Of course, this is the moment Tom and the Captain have been working and nearly drowning for, and it would be so very easy to just tell Q, _yeah, there's a whole ancient world down there. A world that you cannot fathom – sheltering a small, dying race of people who are gentle and kind and everything you're not. And maybe you should swallow your pathetic fear of venturing into reaches that you cannot control and just go down there yourself, you might learn something. Even if it's only your own limits._

If he said all that, then Q would do what he's promised and the Enterprise could lift off the roiling ocean and collect those escape pods and maybe Q would return them all home. And their best-case scenario would _not _be a re-run of having a crew stuck in some other alien Quadrant for years and years (if not forever, since they'd be without a ship).

_But here's the thing. _

If Tom _does _tell Q what he wants to hear, just what will Q do with the information that he has craved so badly, that he cannot find out for himself? He'll probably treat Alarra's people the way he does humans - as sentient toys to be hauled out and played with for his amusement the next time the continuum-schmerz strikes him. But even if Q decides to use his knowledge for good, maybe to drop by and fix up those crumbling coral homes or build the merfolk a totally new palace, the peace of that underwater haven will be forever shattered.

Because with Q, once is forever and things will never be the same after he has been and done.

Tom understands now how Janeway must have felt when she fired on the Caretaker's array, sacrificing the future of her crew and a bunch of outlaws to the wellbeing of a race of peaceful people. Hobson's choice, really. Except there were a lot more Ocampa than there are merpeople, a lot fewer people on Voyager than on the Enterprise, and the ship is dying, so the equities in this case favour the sellout.

Then again, there's Miral_ …_ But Miral is actually safe in an escape pod, with Baby Tommy and Libby. And this is Q, who introduced the Borg to humanity, and …

_No_. Just … _no._

Tom looks over at Will and realizes with a mixture of surprise and awe that the Captain has undergone pretty much the same thought processes, and seems to have arrived at pretty much the same conclusion at pretty much the same speed. So whatever pearls of carefully calibrated bullshit Tom will be dispensing over the next few minutes, they won't be a red mark on his ledger alone.

Riker nods along as Tom speaks, anticipating each word that falls from his XO's mouth as if it were his own, approving them all.

"We saw a whole bunch of fish, in all sorts of shape and colours. Some of them tried to eat us, thank you very much."

_Indignation makes good distraction. _

Riker nods vigorously and chimes in, "Yeah, big things with teeth. Lots of smaller fish. Jellyfish, too. So if you like fish, we found a lot. Amazing how similar they are to species you find on Earth."

Tom almost smiles; Riker is pretty good at this lying thing. Of course, he kind of knew that already, after the whopper the Captain pulled on the Romulan commander in the Neutral Zone, and the regularity with which he fleeces his staff on poker night.

"And of course, we saw lots of corals," Tom picks up the ball. "I went down into this bowl and it was full of corals, grown into reefs that looked like a city."

"A city?" Q is intrigued, and a pink tongue darts out and whets his lips.

"Corals that _looked_ like a city," Tom elaborates (sort of), looking Q straight in the eyes. "I wish I could tell you more, Q, since you're holding our ship hostage and all. Fact is, corals build up over the years and _can_ look like walls, or a ring fortress. Can't tell you the number of times people on Earth thought they'd found the lost city of Atlantis, and they had was some particularly well-shaped coral reef."

_The truth, and nothing but the truth._ If not, perhaps, the _whole_ truth.

It is quite clear Q has been hoping for more.

"No sentient life? Machinery?"

Who would have thought that an adolescence filled with parental cross-examination and filial obfuscation could prove to be such useful training ground for evasiveness? Tom fields this one with practiced ease, almost like a professional politician.

"Machinery? No. And define sentient. There were a lot of fish down there. Some of them looked like they were capable of planning pretty effective dinner campaigns." He might have had to say more, but a convenient swell knocks him down and into the helm console.

Q snorts his indignation at the ineffectiveness of his involuntary research assistants.

"That's _it_? You spent two hours down there, and all you found was fish and corals?"

Almost as if to punctuate his ire, the Enterprise heaves upwards – she would be vertical if not for the fact that her star drive is, for the moment, still acting as an enormous keel rather than as the ballast that will eventually cause her to go down.

"I stepped on a really nasty starfish," Tom embellishes his tale from the floor. He's beginning to feel a little green inside, and his shoulder hurts from where he just slammed it into the conn.

"It took a while to pull out the barbs, so I could keep on swimming."

_Not to mention breathing. _His voice acquires a genuine edge when he remembers just how close to dying he's been, several times actually, as a result of Q's stupid games.

"Here, look at the bloody holes in my feet."

Riker shoots him an approving glance, and weighs in.

"I think we've done what you asked us to do. You sent us down there based on a continuum 'rumour' that somebody left something important behind down there, and that you'd like us to find it and tell you about it. You never said what would happen if we didn't."

Harry, who's been watching all of this while hanging on to one of the consoles and worrying about what's happening to the Flyer he had been put in charge of, is losing patience and chimes in, "Now can we have our engines back so we can get out of here? Please?"

Jorak nods crisply, and adds, "The Captain and Commander have completed their part of the so-called bargain. It is time to end this charade."

Q, needless to say, does not dignify any of these comments with a response, and he clearly doesn't like having his own vagueness thrown back in his face. He stands there weighing the information he has just been given, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.

He looks over at Deanna Troi, the professional empath who can detect a lie at ten thousand metres. But Deanna is not an idiot; she knows that her face can be an open book and quickly decides that _now _is a good time to give up her battle with nausea. Q's scrutiny yields nothing but the very real contortions of violent retching.

He's not satisfied though, and makes no move to snap those destiny fingers of his. The ship heaves and drops again, listing slightly to port now.

But before anyone can say or do anything else, there is something like a thunderclap on the bridge. Tom has just enough time to think, "_now what?"_ when a miraculous calm descends on the bridge and the floor under his knees starts to hum.

"Warp core and impulse engines are back online." His pilot instincts – the ones that permit him to determine the ship's speed through the soles of his boots - have never failed him in this.

Tom catapults himself off the floor and into the seat of the conn before O'Reilly can make so much as a move, and starts to hammer commands into the console. With a groan that sounds almost human, the big ship slowly pulls herself out of the heaving sea, almost fighting against her liberation with her own weight. Water starts running slowly off the hull and she bucks and rolls a few more time before she is up in the air and he has only the storm to contend with.

"Harry, shields, _now_ – ice prevention!" Tom snaps over his shoulder. He takes the ship for a glide through the atmosphere to dry her off before they enter the cold of space, and for the moment couldn't care less about whatever is happening behind him.

Riker, Jorak and Ayala do care though, as does Deanna who has managed to suppress her retching almost as quickly as she summoned it. Ayala and Jorak have their phasers out, but the fact that the intruder seems to have restored the ship to its ordinary function suggests that their use might be ill-advised.

A figure, humanoid in outline but glowing with an inner light so bright that it renders its outline in a blurred halo, stands between Q and Riker.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Q demands to know. The annoyance that had been simmering under the surface has finally cracked through.

"Making sure that your ill-placed curiosity does not kill innocent bystanders, Q."

The two beings take each other's measure. Q seems a little on the defensive, and covers it up with his usual mixture of bravado and peevishness.

"Curiosity? Curious about what? You and your silly little pet projects? Don't flatter yourself. We were having a bit of fun here."

"Speak for yourself," Tom mutters under his breath as he rises to relinquish the helm to O'Reilly. The newcomer's voice – if it can be described as such – reverberates inside the officers' heads, almost as if it were hardwired right into their synapses. The alien turns to Riker.

"The escape pods are safe, and you will find it unnecessary to evacuate further members of your crew. I have undone the actions of this Q," she says, the slight undercurrent of contempt unmistakable.

She. There is something female about the alien, at least Tom thinks so. Although it is pretty hard to assign gender to what looks like an energy source, not to mention someone … _something _that apparently outranks Q in the unwritten hierarchy of the universe. The latter hasn't said anything, just clenched the jaw whose appearance he has borrowed from the very race he likes to torment.

"You would be well-advised to leave now, Q," she adds mildly. "You have had your differences with the Continuum for a very long time, and you do not wish to have me bring this latest transgression to their attention. You will no doubt recall the last time you fell into disfavor. Your powers may not be so easily restored a second time."

It's Riker's turn to snort, and Tom makes a mental note to pour the Captain a stiff drink soon; there's a story there, of that he has no doubt. The barely veiled threat seems to work, too.

Q drops all pretenses and mutters something about having made a promise to Q – his girlfriend, Tom assumes – and not wishing to return empty-handed. Apparently he has done something that cannot be undone, and been told to atone for it by bringing back with information about the mysteries of this planet, which his people cannot penetrate.

"What you bargained is not my problem," the being replies. "Nor is it the problem of these humans. You cannot give what is not in your gift."

Tom has been following this exchange with undisguised curiosity, wondering what kind of sticky situation Q has found himself in. And suddenly he has his second epiphany in rapid succession; this time he has no problem at all giving Q the whole truth.

"Peanut butter," he says.

Everyone on the bridge stares at him in varying degrees of mystification; even the energy alien flickers a little at the apparent non sequitur. Tom hastens to elaborate.

"When you first turned up here you mentioned your … your girlfriend not speaking to you because of some chewing gum incident, right, Q? So, if this whole thing was about getting back into her good graces because she's pissed off at you over that, there _are_ easier ways than wrecking our ship and turning me and the Captain into sushi. If Q junior or the Missus got gum in their hair while you were playing human family again …"

Tom notes with satisfaction that Q is paying very close attention, despite his air of studied indifference.

"... the best way to get it out is with peanut butter. Old Earth remedy. Crude, but effective, as a friend of mine would say."

Q is pretty dumbfounded, which has to be a first, but refuses to admit to anything. He snarks something unintelligible at the alien presence about this not being the end of things, and that one of these days he'll figure out what they're hiding and how, and vanishes.

Quite possibly to procure peanut butter.

"That was … kind of anti-climactic," Harry observes to no one in particular. Well, maybe to Tom, who nods his agreement.

But it isn't really the end, not yet. There is that _other_ alien on the bridge, the one who fixed the ship and caused Q to scatter, although for all they know she has an ulterior motive of her own. Riker hasn't forgotten about her at all, even as he quickly checks in on Engineering. B'Elanna and the small remainder of her team have returned to their stations, and are confirming that the engines will allow them to rendezvous with the escape pods. That done, the Captain addresses the intruder.

"Pardon me," he says, "and you are …?"

The alien turns towards the Captain and gives a little twitch that could have been a bow, or some other form of polite greeting.

"My people are called the Preservers," she says simply, as if that explains everything. Maybe it does.

Tom, having relinquished the helm to its rightful occupant, heads for the centre at the bridge to stand beside Riker.

"I've heard of them," he whispers to the Captain. "An ancient race that supposedly wanders around the galaxy, collecting species that are on the brink of extinction, and gives them a safe environment. Kirk ran across one of their worlds and we may have too, in the Delta Quadrant."

The being turns to Tom, her soft shimmer suggesting that she might be pleased by the recognition.

"That is a little simplistic, but not wrong," she says. "The world you have just left is under our protection."

"The pearls," he asks, and is rewarded with a vibration in his mind that is a very clear _yes. _"They're like a cloaking device."

The other officers – with the exception of O'Reilly, who is busy flying the ship to collect the escape pods - look confused, and Tom explains.

"The ocean floor," he says, "was covered with these giant clam shells full of pearls. The Q can't see past them, correct?"

The alien holds out a hand; cradled in her insubstantial palm is a very substantial pearl, just like the one Alarra had given Tom.

"More than that," she says, and again the sense of a benign smile is overwhelming. "They have none of their powers near these pearls. Including the power of memory. He would not remember your existence while you were close to one."

"You were right all along, Captain, it was the pearls," Tom muses. "That's what Q wanted - to learn about the pearls, and perhaps figure out how to turn them off so he could … _play_ with these people."

The alien nods, and Riker – refusing to seize the opportunity to feel a bit smug - picks up the thread.

"And I guess the pearl in your pocket was why Q forgot about you on the Flyer. He didn't hear you over the comm either, Tom. He only reacted when _I_ started talking. Like you were erased from existence, even though we could hear you perfectly well."

He turns back to the alien. "I assume you surrounded the whole city with those things, to protect Alarra's people from detection by the Q? I assume we set off an alarm bell in your universe when I tried to pick one out of the shell?"

The alien nods simply, and seems to smile again.

Harry is still confused. It doesn't help that he has absolutely no idea who _Alarra's people _might be, although he gets that Tom and Will held back something major in their report to Q. He'll squeeze Tom for the details soon enough. In the meantime, there are some general questions that he feels he should ask.

"But if you need to protect whoever is down there against the Q, why not against us? Or people like us? Why could the Captain and Commander see them?"

"You are no threat," she says. "Not anymore. You have learned this, and surprisingly fast. The Q are … destructive. They cannot help this; the need to impose their will on the universe, to shape and change it at their whim, it is in their nature. But some things must not be made to change."

_Q introduced humanity to the Borg._

Tom ventures a guess.

"Alarra's people must be a very old race? We have legends about them on Earth."

The alien nods. "Yes, they are very old. There are creatures of the sea, the earth, the wind and the fire; it depends on their stage of evolution."

She pauses for a moment, and Deanna interjects softly. "You are fire."

"Yes, we are. Your own people are just now beginning to change from earth to wind; you are still bound to the planets, but already you move beyond, if only in earth-made ships like this." She gestures around the bridge.

"The oldest creatures are of the sea. Their time is nearly at an end. You have seen the city Alarra's people live in … Their halls were once shining and beautiful. Only one city now remains, on the world where Q brought you. It is decaying, and its people are becoming children again. It cannot be helped."

There is affection in her tone, regret and a lingering, profound sadness.

"I do not see the logic in allowing this world to decay," Jorak interjects. "If your race calls itself the Preservers, and you have powers that go beyond even those of the Q, then why not preserve all races equally?"

Tom answers the question, almost as if to himself. "Because they preserve _everything_, including the willingness of a people to make mistakes, to fail to evolve, and to lose interest in their own future."

He addresses the alien now. "The Q insist on messing with everything they touch. What you preserve is the ability … the right to make choices, isn't that right?"

The alien seems to get even brighter.

"That is correct, Tom Paris," she hums. "And if a species is ready to die of old age, then they have the right to do so in peace and dignity. The people you would call the merfolk chose this path long ago."

It's Deanna's turn; she has had to deal with Q more than the others this day, and so it's quite natural that she should be the one to ask this question.

"I always thought the Q to be the most powerful beings in the universe. At least that's what they'll have us believe. And yet … you seem to be able to defeat them almost at will. What does that make you?"

The alien vibrates a little – a chuckle?

"It makes us older, and wiser," she replies. "The Q still do not understand what is important; they are blind to the importance - and the truth - of life and death."

Tom suddenly remembers Quinn, the Q who came aboard Voyager to die; _their_ Q helped him in that pursuit, against the wishes of the Continuum. Perhaps he and his lady are still exploring the concept of death? It would explain his interest in the rumored lost world beneath the sea ... Still, Tom is quite content with his and the Captain's decision to keep Alarra's – and the Preservers' – secret from a race that has so far singularly failed to impress him.

Speaking of secrets …

"I guess we better not mention this in the logs?" Riker asks the alien, but his remarks are addressed to the bridge officers. "Wouldn't want Q to start taking an interest in our records."

"Yes," the alien sings in their minds. "You and your companion may hold your experiences in memory and you may speak to them to your friends; they are linked to the pearls. Q cannot touch even such stories - not until they are remote enough to have slipped into rumour and legend."

Ayala, who has been listening to everything with his customary silence, whispers to Harry, "Explains why the guys is so keen on finding those damn pearls. Major chip off his omniscience."

The alien turns to Tom, and holds out her hand with the shimmering pearl.

"Take it, it was a gift bestowed on you by a friend. And its presence will further bind what you have learned to you and to this ship, and help this knowledge withstand Q's gaze."

She gives a second pearl to Riker.

"This is the one that almost cost you your hand, Captain, but it came willingly in the end. Keep it as a memento of your visit to this world, and of the time you shared with a people that has little time left. And now I must go."

Tom swallows a little; there are a number of things he'd still like to ask but it's obvious that question period is over. A sudden fading of the light, a last shudder of his mind as the alien presence takes her leave from them, and she is gone.

…..

It's been a far longer day than any of them had expected when they got up in the morning, with a lot more mileage and stress on the poor ship than she really needs. B'Elanna has been fussing over her engines to the point where Tom is afraid she might pitch up a sleeping bag beside the warp core, just to make sure it wasn't too traumatized by its sudden descent into antiquity.

Then there was the mop-up. What was left of the rather storm-battered, half-drowned Flyer One is now the shuttle bay, awaiting a serious maintenance call. The escape pods needed to be reconnected with their launch pads, to ensure quick deployment the next time. At least that last part can be seen as a useful drill, Tom figures. The ship had been emptied of its families, civilians and non-essential personnel in under ten minutes, which has to be some kind of record. And it's probably the only part of today's events that can reasonably make it into the official logs.

On top of that, Tom had a pretty narrow escape when Harry, with a discreet "psst", reminded him that he'd actually been half naked throughout those final exchanges on the bridge. Ever the reliable friend, Harry had brought over a freshly replicated tank top to conceal what Tom has managed to keep under wraps for seven long years on Voyager.

"Ayala and the other bridge officers will keep their mouth shut, if they even noticed," Harry had said. "But you wouldn't want the rest of the crew to …" His voice had trailed off then, and Tom had clapped him on the shoulder in gratitude. There'll be a bottle of fine, un-replicated wine on Harry and Libby's doorstep later tonight.

So yeah, it's been a long day, but it's over now and Tom is heading to his quarters with almost a spring in his step. He can't wait to see Miral, to hold her and to listen to her excited account of her escape pod adventure over a slice of pepperoni pizza or three.

His hand caresses the smooth, round object in his pocket. Eventually he'll ask Crewman Elliott in procurement, who makes jewelry in her spare time, to set it for him and turn it into a pendant, but for now he'll just give it to Miral as it is. He takes it out and looks at it as he walks; the shimmering, glowing pearl catches the dull corridor lights and transforms them into pure, ethereal, aching beauty, right there in his hand.

His mother's voice is loud in his ears: "Don't give something this small to a child under three, Tommy!"

But fortunately Miral is a quarter Klingon, and Tom reasons that this puts her well past the _small objects may be harmful if swallowed _threshold. Besides, his daughter has considerable common sense, and the last thing she'd do with anything she likes, is to 'make it gone' by sticking it in her mouth.

B'Elanna will probably kill him, though, since the story he plans to tell Miral when he gives her the pearl is liable to extend his daughter's princess phase by at least a few weeks.

_It's a gift from the little mermaid_, he will say, and a smile crosses his face as the truth of the statement settles in his mind. _A gift drawn from deep water, so she can live out her days in peace, and we may hold her in memory._

And if giving the pearl to Miral means that Q won't be able to get a bead on his daughter for as long as she has it, well then, that's a bonus.


End file.
